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HGV training needs more support
Page 103
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• A unique truck driving apprenticeship system, which allows teenagers to drive HGVs up to 17 tonnes, is desperately short of transport companies to employ the youngsters being trained.
The Road Transport Industry Training Board, which runs the Government-backed Young Driver Scheme, is keen to recruit more firms on to the programme, which gives 17 to 20-year-olds the chance to hold a Class III licence while they train with a company.
Currently, only 70 trainees a year join the YDS, which began in 1975 and is the only way the Government allows young people under the age of 21 to drive an HGV.
The problem is not a shortage of budding drivers — the RTITB is inundated with requests from youngsters and career offices to find out more about the scheme each year — it is a lack of willing companies.
"The big problems are that it costs money and takes time," says the scheme's administrator David Scott. He adds that most firms choose to either take on inexperienced HGV licence holders or send older recruits on intensive training.
Under the YDS, companies pay £225 to register and then a further one-off £200 for every trainee they take on. But before this happens they must be vetted by the RTITB.
While the teenager is being trained, the company pays his or her wages (about three or four of the trainees each year are female). The apprenticeship can take up to three years, during which the trainee receives extensive training in subjects such as loading, security, routeing, vehicle checks and accident procedures. He or she must remain with the one firm throughout.
Trainees sit their Class III tests at age 18 and cannot drive artics until they are 21. At the end of the scheme they are awarded a National Vocational Qualification.
Scott admits that the scheme has progressed little since being set up and may need some updating, "but basically," he says, "we need to get the message over to the industry."
For information on the YDS, contact: 081-902 8880.