Ten years on
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Training — a word used in hushed whispers, incredulous tones or with blasphemous adjectives ten years ago — has grown to respectability. To an industry managed by entrepreneurs, the thought of training for success pushed up the blood pressure and brought on spasms of near-hysteria.
The Road Transport Industry Training Board was the subject of derisory comment and its officers the targets for verbal abuse. The Board's seemingly parasitical practice of extracting part of the operators' hard earned cash to finance its activities endeared it to the hearts of few.
Times have changed and gradually, over the years, the RTITB has won friends and influenced people. Much of the credit for this success must surely go to its director-general, Eric Tindall.
By quiet persuasion but more particularly by results, the RTITB has demonstrated the value of training. In much the same way, FTA has taken the vast own-account sector down the training road.
The result is an industry better equipped in manpower terms than it was ten years ago, with a new hunger for training that the early opponents of the plan would have found hard to believe.