Q Could you give me some assistance regarding qualifications to improve my position and usefulness in the road haulage industry?
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At the moment I am employed as a vehicle inspector and functional tester for a 300-plus vehicle company but the only claim to any qualification is one year with the MoT as a tester before becoming redundant and I feel that to advance at all it is necessary for me to obtain some recognized qualifications.
AThere are one or two basic factors which you should consider, and first among these is whether you intend to stick to the engineering side of the industry or have
ambitions to get on to the traffic operating or administrative side.
If you wish to stay in engineering, then your best course of study is via the City and Guilds examinations followed by the Ordinary and Higher National Certificates and then apply for membership of the Institute of Road Transport Engineers and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. To obtain such qualifications entails a great deal of dedicated study but the end result should enable you to progress to a quite high position in the industry, perhaps as a fleet engineer.
In addition to technical studies, you will need to gain as much practical experience as possible and also to keep yourself aware of developments in the rest of the industry, to ensure that you have a sufficiently wide knowledge of transport and of business activities in general.
On the operating side, the pattern is much the same, but you would need to obtain a position in a transport office for understanding of that side of the job, while studying for the examinations of the Institute of Transport, the Industrial Transport Association or the Institute of Traffic Administration.
You should watch for opportunities to change to a better position because little is gained by staying with a firm in which there are no prospects for gaining promotion or wider experience.