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Driving ambition
Page 7
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To the uninitiated, spending £700000 on a week's intensive training and passing the HGV test should hold the key to a job—any one of 5o,000 jobs if estimates of driver shortages are anything to go by. But the problem is that it just doesn't work like that.
As someone who has passed their category C test within the last fortnight, I can now drive a truck. It does require a certain skill level to pass, but the problem for me and countless others who pass their HGV tests is that I still have no experience of the "real world".
The "real world" means driving with a load, but also reversing into something more tricky than a yellow painted box on the ground, and being able to drive safely and confidently on a day-to-day basis without the aid of an instructor.
There are plenty of people who are dead keen to pass their HGV test but many struggle to get a job because they haven't got the experience.
This seems like a golden opportunity for the Road Haulage Modernisation Fund. Rather than telling firms and their employees what they already often know, why not invest time and money in helping newly qualified drivers get crucial experience? What about paying hauliers to take on potential drivers under a "job shadow" scheme so they can learn the ropes properly? It's surely worth considering as one way to help "modernise" our industry and make it accessible to the people who
are so keen to Emma Penny. Deputy Editor.
join it. emma.penny z_trblecuak