stu675:
if you understood the story, that’s what it’s about. Allowing access to 7.5T is seen as a route to hgv training.
As I commented myself above; but I suspect there’s more to it than just a route.
At the moment, councils alone must be spending hundreds of thousands of pounds putting drivers through C1 licences so that they can drive little tippers and the like which form the backbone of council fleets. The majority of those vehicles probably don’t do more than a couple of hundred miles a week and as far as the blokes who drive them are concerned, it’s just transport to and from the various places where they dig holes, repair kerbs etc. Ditto small builders, roofers, etc. Deregulating the 7.5 tonners, or more to the point setting the law back where it was, would save those councils (and by definition us as ratepayers) a helluva lot of money and improve productivity too as those blokes would be digging holes instead of driver training.
Furthermore, as I also mentioned above, it’s an easy way to “try before you buy”. Cost of DCPC and digicard is far less than a week’s driver training, off you go in your puddle-jumper, if you like the job you go for the big boys licence, if you don’t you ain’t gambled all your savings away.
The only losers will be the training companies; but they’ve had it good for a while now.