First step to becoming a HGV driver

[callmedave]

Hi all.

I've always wanted to be truck driver but the cost of the training has always put me off, I've ambled along in life, going from job to job and I've found myself behind a desk for 8 hours a day.

I'm in a position now where I have two paths laid in front of me, I can continue with my current job, my boss is great, he is very supportive and is always helping me to learn more about the job and I can easily get myself into a well paid managerial roll in this industry in a few years time OR i can pursue my childhood dream and become a truck driver.

I've decided with the latter and i have my medical booked for this afternoon I consider this as the first step in becoming a HGV driver. I have been revising using the official books ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/official-guide-driving-go...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-Theory-Drivers-L...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-DVSA-Guide-Hazar...

If you are interested)

I hope to get my provisional back in the new year, Then I will have an assessment drive with the trainer I have chosen, we will go out in a truck for an hour or two and see what level my driving ability is at,it is also a great opportunity for me to experience driving a truck and the difference it offers over a car.

The next step is the the tests (hazard perception, theory etc) and the training/learning.

I would like to record my experience of the process from leaving my office job through to starting work as a HGV driver. Its a good opportunity for me to reflect, but also it may help others in a similar position who are thinking of a career change too. My boss is aware of my intention to leave once I have my license and again, he is very understanding of this which is a great relief.

I invite you to ask questions or offer any comments you may have.

Thanks
Tom

Edit: Here is a table of my costs. I will update this from time to time.

Description	Cost
Medical	£51
Theory books and DVD	£30
16 hours Cat C training + Test	£1176
2 hours Initial CPC training	£168
Theory Test (module 1)	£37
CPC Case Study (module 2)	£23
Driving Test (module 3)	£115
CPC Practical Demonstration	£55
Tacho digi card	£38
Total	£1693

Some of these prices are set, Tacho Card and theory test etc are going to be the same. But your training costs will differ depending where you go.

Edited by callmedave on Thursday 22 December 21:51

Edited by callmedave on Saturday 24th December 00:33

[callmedave]

Hi all

Thanks for the great comments. I was expecting a lot more of the 'aint what it used to be' type comments too

To update, Medical was a breeze, so i have now applied for my provisional Cat C license, I have applied for D too after recomendation from several people, going for Cat C kind of permits you for D so i might as well get it on my license at the same time.

They say I should allow 3 weeks for my license back, but with Xmas and New year coming up I dont expect to see it back until 2017. once I have this I will be booking my assessment drive with Gordon Springate: http://www.gordonspringate.co.uk/ He is the closest, but I popped up there a while ago for a chat and I felt comfortable with them, I haven't seen any bad reviews from them so don't see a reason not to go with them. They can also offer Hi-ab training and they say they will be able to do ADR soon. Both of which I intend to acquire.

I've also been watching a few guys on youtube, Luke C, Seggons and Highway Phobia are all great to watch, Jay is good to watch also, but not necessarily as a role model!

I'm revising from the books I mentioned previous, Next update will probably in the new year once i have done the assessment drive and i have had my first taste of driving a LGV!

R0G said:

Hope you did not pay more than £60 for the medical = ripped off if you did

Have you checked out the newbies forum on trucknetuk ? - especially the LGV TRAINING TIPS thread

£51 with Doctors on wheels

s p a c e m a n said:

If you're doing class 1 I can point you in the direction of some work in Thurrock when you pass your test, save you having to endure the agencies whilst you get experience.

I'll be doing class 2, but do intend to advance to class 1 and Thurrock is pretty much the furthest I would want to drive, I really appreciate the offer and I'll be in touch when I get class 1.

[callmedave]

R0G said:

Do Gordon Springate do the driver cpc ?

Yep.

When did you pass your car licence ?

05/15

[callmedave]

Iva Barchetta said:

I'm going to be the negative one.

....

I appreciate you negative comments. It would be wrong for me to go into a new job with rose tinted specs.

I must admit, I would not enjoy driving in London, especially in a 7.5tonner, but I'm relatively calm as a driver and happy plodding along following the sat nav, if an agency rang me up and said I was doing multi drop in London, the. So be it, I'm starting at the bottom and understand I gotta work my way up.

I plan to start with agency work, which does mean that (after a while) I can drop the jobs that I don't enjoy. My plan is that via the agency's I will end up working for a lot of different companies, once I find a 'gud-un' I can try to make a good impression on them and hopefully get a full time job with them.

[callmedave]

All that jazz said:

Wasting your money. You won't get anyone to pay you enough to make the extra hassle worthwhile - ADR in particular. For either you'll only see an extra £1/hr max over what you'd get for driving standard loads and that's only if you're lucky. If the agency sees you coming I'll guarantee you'll get "the customer will only pay x so we can't pay you any more" line. The training company makes nice money off these courses so of course they'll want to push them but take their sales patter with a pinch of salt and DYOR.

Its not necessarily the extra money, its the more options available to me allowing me to pick a choose a little more.

Look at it this way, if you had two candidates for a HGV job of delivering papers for example, one had ADR and one didn't, who would you hire? - surely you would pick the one that's been trained to a higher standard?

At the moment I don't have an exact idea of what kind of trucking job I would like to do, but Im hoping that with the variety of work that agency works brings, I should find out pretty quick.

[callmedave]

Ah,

had not thought about the renewing of them, but that does make a lot of sense. Thanks.

[callmedave]

All that jazz said:

1. You won't get work doing either without 2 yrs provable hands on experience.

2. Doesn't work like that. Agency or company won't care like Spaceman says. All they're bothered about is price.

Your money to burn but my advice is to get your class 2 and then class 1, then get 2 years experience under your belt and ignore all the ADR and hiab stuff. A lot of newbies come into the industry still believeing that doing fuel work is the holy grail in terms of pay yet and pecking order but it hasn't been like that for 20+ years and it's now just another stty low paid job with equally stty shift patterns and complete HSE overkill. Best money where you are is in doing store delivery work for one of the supermarkets and you only need a pulse to do that, no ADR or hiab.

Thats great advice. Much appreciated.

[callmedave]

Hello all

Update:
Got license back last Friday (16th) that took one week to get back to me!

I have my assessment drive booked tomorrow for 7:30am. Im feeling excited about driving a truck, but also nervous as I could be terrible at it. Ive spent the last few months really concentrating on my driving and trying to detect any bad habits I may have. I think we all become 'lazy' with driving, not necessarily unsafe, but little things that a lot of us do probably without thinking.

Im having two hands on the wheel more, checking both wing mirrors more often and much more aware of traffic around me, But we will see how much of an affect this has tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

[callmedave]

Thanks Spaceman

Thats given me a bit more confidence.

[callmedave]

....Anyway.

I had my 'Assessment drive' today. It was a M A N, probably around 20 years old. It had a 4 over 4 gearbox basically you can go through gears 1-4 in the normal manner (we pull away in 3rd no problem) then you knock it over to the right to activate the high range and you have 4 more gears, It takes a little bit of thought, but can see that 20 minutes with this and you would do it without thinking about it. The Truck Bounces around quite a bit! but I'm guessing that old suspension and low speed (got up to maybe 30) I felt confident sitting up higher with good visibility in the cab. I would have been quite happy to take it out on the road. The drive was literally 5 minutes in the cab, went round the block, a small tarmac path on private ground. No junctions. no traffic. I was expecting to go on the road for 20 minutes or to do a reversing exercise or something.

A little disappointed but not put off in the least.

The assessor is happy with my driving and suggested 16hrs over 4 days with a test the practical test on the Friday. I paid a £300 deposit today. We have booked my Hazard perception, Theory and module 1 test - These are all on the 17th January. I have provisionally booked my lessons for the 28th Feb to the with the test on the 4th March. I said that I do not mind 'doubling up' on the lessons, Im paying for 16 hours but will effectively get 32 in the cab half of it driving, Half of it watching someone else and either learn from their mistakes or learn from their techniques.

They also leant me 2 DVDs:

The complete LGV and PCV hazard perception tests:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Theory-Hazard-Pe...

And the complete LGV and PCD Driver CPC Case Study Test:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Driving-Tests/Complete-...

These are better than the books I previously posted. I highly recommend!

Took a practise run on the Hazard and Theory test, Scored 95% on the Theory (Pass is 85%) and 71 on the hazard perception (pass is 67) - on the Hazard perception you can review you marking, I clicked too early on one hazard, If I had waited a split second I would have scored 5 more!

Im feeling very excited now that my dream now has started rolling and dates are being set. I plan on doing a little bit of revision each day and will do the mock tests every 4/5 days to make sure Im on top of it.

[callmedave]

Its Category C.

Agree that most modern trucks will be Auto', but imagine learning Auto then getting in a truck with a range splitter.

Im aware that when Im starting and the 'new boy' I'll be given the sttest/oldest/dirtiest trucks, probably the ones with the worst gearboxes too!

[callmedave]

if its got 4 wheels and goes, I'll be happy!

[callmedave]

Ki3r said:

Watching this thread with interest. I'm currently a delivery driver with Tesco for their home shopping, love the driving side of it.

How much are we looking at cost wise to get your licence?

Assuming I don't need to retake any tests or require any further training then its going to set me back around £1500.

I have already put down a £300 deposit and I can pay the rest over the phone as and when, so I will just call them up each payday and pay a off.

[callmedave]

All that jazz said:

What does that £1500 get you. List everything.

at work so dont have the exact pricing - Plan to edit my first post with a tracker to keep track off all the costs.

From memory:

CPC Module 1 & 2
Hazard perception
Theory
Practical lessons and Test.

[callmedave]

I have updated the first page with a table of costs for those that were asking.

[callmedave]

All that jazz said:

Now double it as you've failed to include your class 1. = £3k, assuming you pass all tests first time.

For now I'm only going for class 2. I would like to get class 1 eventually butthat will probably be after a year or two.

[callmedave]

Thanks Jazz.

Piss and st would make me heave, but Im not worried about hard graft, Being in this office job the last year I have noticed my belts seem to be getting shorter so happy to undertake a bit of physical work from time to time.


When I was in the instructors office, they said that a local frozen food company and an Aggregates company are looking for drivers. I would be happy driving an 18 tonne tipper around dropping rubble etc off!

[callmedave]

alangtt said:

What's the deal with those guys who deliver fuel in the little tankers. I think they do houses and farms etc. There's loads around here (North Wales) More qualifications I'm guessing but is the job itself worth it? Think I'd quite like it.

Depending on whats inside it may require additional training, Certain products fall under the Hazardous materials category and will require an ADR certificate (additional training cost) If the truck has an orange diamond plate on it then its this.

Fertiliser for example will require an ADR certificate, Chicken Feed wont.

[callmedave]

Hi guys, Quick update.

As mentioned, I have already told my boss my intentions. He made me an offer today of a decent payrise + Bonus and a few other perks in exchange that I continue working for him up until at least the end of August.

At first I did not want to accept the offer as I had my heart set on driving lorries by Aprilish time, But thinking realistically I can use the extra cash to pay for the training (rather than putting it on the Credit card) and get some extra training like HIAB. It also puts me in a better position when I do come to change jobs, There may be a period initially where I don't have any work, Having space on the Credit card will help with this.

I have accepted his offer, which means instead of training in Early March, I can maybe move that to April/May time.

I need to have a think about what I do next and if I move my training or not - I still need to pay the £1200 yet so this gives me a bit more of a comfortable period in which I have to pay and a space in case I fail one of the theory tests in January.

[callmedave]

Hello all.

So today was the day I took my theory tests I had 3 tests to do CPC (Module 1) Hazard perception and the Driving Theory test.

I was least confident about my CPC as when practising at home I was only just getting a pass score (and one or two fails!)

Anyway, results are:

CPC 47 out of 50 (Pass is 40)


Hazard Perception 93 out of 100 (Pass is 67)


Driving Theory 97 out of 100 (Pass is 85)



I sat one test at a time and got the result after each test, I folded the paper without looking until I had all three, I was worried the outcome of one would affect my mindset on the next (pass or fail).
Anyway, I'm absolutely over the moon with my results, as you can see I didn't just scrape though, I smashed it!

Next step is paying for and booking my practical training, I have two years in which to do this, but plan to undertake it summertime this year. Next update from me will probably be once I have a date for my practical training.