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Recovery course in the country
Page 65
Page 66
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David Wilcox visits Catling's breakdown operation in Chesham which also runs its own training course to encourage a professional service in vehicle recovery.
Brian Weatherley took the pictures
CATLING'S Auto Recovery of Chesham, Buckinghamshire, runs a 24-hour breakdown and recovery service for both commercial vehicles and cars, but. more interestingly, also runs a course for training others in the art (and science) of vehicle recovery. It is one of very few such commercial courses for training recovery operators, and has full Road Transport Industrial Training Board recognition.
Jim Catling, the company's managing director and chairman, himself went on the RTITB 071 Breakdown and Recovery Procedures course at MOTEC and his own course follows similar lines. He told me: "Vehicles are getting more and more sophisticated and expensive. You can't afford to send amateurs out to recover them when they break down on the road."
He has been running his course now for four years and it has become firmly established. Mercedes-Benz and Fiat send -their commercial vehicle and car apprentices for recovery training and other companies that use Jinis course include Southern and North-Eastern British Road Services.
In the four years the course has been in operation, 180 , people have attended. They are mainly fitters, apprentices or supervisors from manufacturers, dealerships or company transport departments.
The course integrates well with Catling's own recovery service and car dealership, and Jim's own experience. in 30 years of recovery work is inevitably of great benefit. The vehicles that Jim uses for his own service are also the training vehicles for the course. The biggest is a giant Scammell, but there is little commercial vehicle recovery work in the rural Chesham area that needs such a monster, and Jim is probably going to sell it.
Next down is.a Ford D1000 with a Holmes twin-boom crane. This is big enough to deal with most light and medium-weight commercial recovery and, of course, cars. The percentage split between the two types of recovery work, commercials or cars, will largely depend on the area.
In Chesham Jim reckoned that only 10-15 per cent of his work is commercial and the rest is with cars, so the Ford D1000 is more than adequate for most of his work.
His other really versatile wrecker is an ex-military Austin K9 with a three-ton crane. This has the useful feature of tour
wheel drive, sometimes very necessary for recoveringcars that have left the road and taken to fields or ditches. Jim also uses it for recovering light vans or construction vehicles that have become bogged down on . ,muddy sites. •
Then there are a couple of Austin FGs and, finally, a Ford D200 transporter. This had just been added to the Catling fleet when CM visited Chesham, and it was being overhauled in the workshops. Fitted with an electric winch, Jim expects it to become a useful vehicle, making car recovery a simple one-man operation.
Jim Catling readily admitted that his wreckers were not the biggest or most modern on the market by a long stretch, but pointed out that they suited the type of work in his area and were simple, reliable and effective. His service covers roughly a 1525 mile radius Iron) Cheshan-s and is one used by the local Thames Valley police force.
Catling's is also a BRS Rescue agent, but Jim said the amount of work he gets through this source has declined.
To complete Jim's virtually total involvement in vehicle recovery, he is a member of AVRO, the Association of Vehicle Recovery Operators_
For the recovery courses themselves, the Ford D1000 and the Austin K9 are the main training vehicles. A minimum of tour people are needed for each course to be viable, and fast year 18 such courses operated. Although both commercial and car vehicle recovery is covered, Jim told me that he 'changes the
emphasis of instruction — if his students are commerci vehicle apprentices then ti bias is towards lorry recove procedures.
As well as learning from t instruction, the trainees nai rally pick up tips from each otland Jim stressed that it is VE much a two-way exchange. '( nearly every course I ri someone will bring up a n( • point or angle.
Each course lasts three da and its declared objective is if "on completing the course, t trainee should be able to opera and maintain all fixed and pc able equipment on the vel-ki and to effect vehicle recovery and off the highway' ".
The first day is spent in t well-equipped classroom Chesham and the trainees IK the basics of choosing the ric vehicle for the particular jc how to position it, and t choice of the correct ancilla equipment. Then comes t mathematical work involved recovery I hadn't realis there was any.
Jim explained that there some standard calculations find out how much effort needed to move a vehicle. T depends on a number of vi ables such as its weight, attitude (is it on its side or on wheels?), the angle of t ground (gradient resistanc and the type of ground surfi (ground resistance). This I. factor was calculated by I Army and varies depending .whether a vehicle is being tcm on a smooth road or pulled of mud.
On the second day ot t course, the legal aspects recovery are discussed-. Thr include such things es the m kings needed on wreckers, Pc iratt[c Acts, and Constructl and Use Regulatk)ns.
This is tollowed by instri an using a large and realistic lodel road layout. With the yout a variety of breakdown id recovery situations can be mulated, and vehicle asitioning and coning-off is arnonstrated by Jim Catling, le theory of front and rear end t is also taught.
Then its instruction on the ;e of steel wire ropes and the ;sortment of fastenings and tachments such as D-shackles, latch blocks and safety hooks. le load capacity or safe worng load of the crane or its steel • nylon wires and strops will apend on how they are used in anjunction with snatch blocks, id the trainees are taught how make use of these to their best vantage.
Trailers are often used for jht van or car recovery, and e course includes instruction -I how to position and load 3ilers correctly.
When lifting and towing ;hides, one should know the greet place on that particular )hicle to lift it and the correct -ocedure to follow. Robert atling, Jim's son and fellow rector, told me of one particur type of car that ejects its indscreen when it is lifted and wed! So Jim includes some as on where and how to pick some of the cars and lorries at his trainees are most likely encounter.
After this, students go out to training area for practical ork. In the countryside around aesham (somewhere in the lilterns, said Jim mysriously), Catling has posianed four old vehicles which e regularly used for testing the eory taught in the classroom. ley are to be found in fields, , in one case, in a pit, and so :ovide a real test in some faram-easy conditions. The four thicles are an old car, a panel in, a rigid four-wheel oil tanker id, 20ft down a pit, a flat rigid. Jim took .us up to the field in hich the old oil tanker was ing on its side, and his son Rob id a fitter demonstrated how Yu should go about righting it. had been raining hard the :evious day and clambering it of Jim's Land-Rover we most sank up to our knees in tilterns' mud. The tour-wheelye facility on the Land-Rover id the Austin K9 wrecker was )cessary even to reach the ,ot
We were kitted out in wateroofs and wellingtons. These e provided for the course and so form a valuable part of ;fling's Auto Recovery equipent — by Sod's Law most eakdowns occur in the rain at night. This dernonstration also effectively showed how, correctly used, a relatively small wrecker can safely recover a sizeable vehicle. The empty oil tanker was about the biggest vehicle the K9 can handle: The first step was to position the nylon strops around the tank. Jim has made some ingenious devices from angle iron and tubing which can go over sharp edges to prevent the nylon strops being chated. After securing the strops to the tanker chassis, using shackles, the Austin was positioned and chocks out behind the rear wheels. The free ends of the strops were then hooked up to the crane wires.
Rob and the fitter turned the hand winches, gradually taking the strain until the tanker toppled surprisingly gently onto its wheels again. The whole operation went quickly, smoothly and efficiently, demonstrating the value, of organisation and familiar procedures.
Resting in the bottom of a n-iuddy waterlogged pit was the old flat rigid, and getting this out is another exercise that trainees on the course would have to perform_ It s an exarnple of the
varied situations that all recovery operators will encounter at one time or another.
Although many breakdowns 'can be dealt with by a fitter arid the vehicle repaired on :the roadside, there will always be the awkward cases. These are , the ones that overturn, the ones that end up in ditches or fields, that run down an embankment, the cars that get tangled together in a smash, fork-lift trucks that sink into soft ground, dump-trucks that get bogged down on construction sites, and so on.
The course closes at the end of the third day with a test to see how much the trainees have learnt, although their certificate to show they have attended the course does not depend on this.
Jim told me that all 1 80 people who had attended went away feeling their time had been well spent and that they had learned a lot. He was in favour of all recovery operators having to go through similar training so that they all reached a certain minimum standard of competence. While most recovery 'operators Were satisfactory, Jim said there are still some who are not even sure what is the safe working load of their equipment.
The important part of recovery is safety, coupled with speed: -The first thing you will be asked when arriving to recover a vehicle that is obstructing traffic is 'how quickly can you get it cleared?' ' said Jim, "so you must be able to work quickly as well as safely. If you are not 100 per cent sure of what you are doing you can easily create more chaos or hazards than you are trying to clear up."
Jim Catling is considering starting a more advanced and specialised course for hgv recovery, but this will depend on likely interest and demand. It would, for instance, include instruction on the use of air-bags for righting or lifting heavy vehicles. In the meantime, the combined commercial and car course he runs offers what appears to be an excellent training for most types of recovery work.
I certainly came away with the impression that there's more to recovery than meets the eye, and understanding the reason for Jim's opening remark about not being able to send amateurs.
For this year Jin-i has 20 dates provisionally arranged for the course, each ot which can accon-imodate a maximum of six trainees. It would seem to be three days well spent.