A long time back we used to see the Army around the Cambridge area training on vehicles that would be no bigger than a rigid, what is commonly called an “urban trailer”
When I did Assessing for the last company worked for, ex army guys usually got into a fluster with anything bigger and doing any loading was just as bad.
theres been a few ex cannon fodder plebs around where ive worked before and to a man,they were worse than your average flipflop.
all the gear,with no idea would sum it up.
one in particular was a lamb to the slaughter for the first few weeks,then all of a sudden he is tanged to the max with the others.
then he bounces a globetrotter into a field,after that,he bounces one down a ditch trying to turn when lost,a couple of weeks later,he takes the side out of a car when merging just before the motorway coming off the birkenhead bot,then voila!! the deciding factor into him getting his jotters was coming down shanes hill ( a twisty bendy road leading into larne),loaded with interlinked cages,2 straps on the back so they slap from side to side as you need to take them off when tipping so you have them to put on your next trailer( dfds at its best),anyhooo,he rallys it down the hill and puts the lot on its side into field…army,be the best.
( i wish i could be arsed making up another name to join in here with so i could answer myself and confirm what a great post it is) 
Great post…
There dieseldog999.
I couldn’t agree more with your very accurate and sincere post about army drivers being the best.
Or not being the best LOL!
dieseldog999:
theres been a few ex cannon fodder plebs around where ive worked before and to a man,they were worse than your average flipflop.
all the gear,with no idea would sum it up.
one in particular was a lamb to the slaughter for the first few weeks,then all of a sudden he is tanged to the max with the others.
then he bounces a globetrotter into a field,after that,he bounces one down a ditch trying to turn when lost,a couple of weeks later,he takes the side out of a car when merging just before the motorway coming off the birkenhead bot,then voila!! the deciding factor into him getting his jotters was coming down shanes hill ( a twisty bendy road leading into larne),loaded with interlinked cages,2 straps on the back so they slap from side to side as you need to take them off when tipping so you have them to put on your next trailer( dfds at its best),anyhooo,he rallys it down the hill and puts the lot on its side into field…army,be the best.( i wish i could be arsed making up another name to join in here with so i could answer myself and confirm what a great post it is)
Think you’ll find they will have been taught Cl1 on resettlement courses paid for by the Army but taught by civilian training schools, upon leaving the forces, perhaps it’s sub standard training they were given.
lolipop:
A long time back we used to see the Army around the Cambridge area training on vehicles that would be no bigger than a rigid, what is commonly called an “urban trailer”
When I did Assessing for the last company worked for, ex army guys usually got into a fluster with anything bigger and doing any loading was just as bad.
lollipop what you say is not true. All army recruits go through an LGV test how ever if your trade is a driver you will be trained on all sorts of vehicles and some far larger than any civvy would drive. An army drivers training is far more involved and intensive than a civvy sitting a basic LGV test.
As has been said already good and bad from both.
robthedog:
the ones i’ve had the misfortune to drive with CANT DRIVE end of !!!
Listen mate, I would not shout too loud. The standard is pretty low all round right now.
There are good ex army drivers and there are good civilian drivers but there are plenty of both that are attrocious.
jakethesnake:
robthedog:
the ones i’ve had the misfortune to drive with CANT DRIVE end of !!!Listen mate, I would not shout too loud. The standard is pretty low all round right now.
There are good ex army drivers and there are good civilian drivers but there are plenty of both that are attrocious.
+1 ^^^^
Grumpy Dad:
Carryfast:
I think there’s a difference between army ‘class 3 licence holders’ because they need to drive a Bedfordv a proper REME/RCT Class 1 ‘driver’.
Or the situation in which someone who actually joins up to be a driver finds themselves caught in the over subscribed nature of that job and ends up in the normal ranks and at best driving a Bedford to dump their mates out in some cold wet deserted part of Wales or Salisbury plain for yet another ‘training’ excercise.While next time it will be someone else driving the Bedford.
So there we have it.My dad,who never wanted to be a driver by trade,was driving stuff in the army like Diamond T tank transporters through the mountains of Austria/Italy and what became Yugoslavia.That myself and his Dad,who really did regard ourselves as ‘drivers’ by trade,could have only dreamed of.
Having said that I do know that having to clear knocked out tanks of the remains of their unfortunate crews,either before or after taking the mess back to a field workshop,or seeing a mate blown up by an anti tank mine ironically planted by Yugoslav partisans in the fight for Istria after WW2 had ended,might just also have affected my Father’s view of the job.Just as it probably would have done mine.Possibly to the point of feeling physically sick at the sight of a tank transporter after all that at least,for all I know.
Carryfast do you have a list of posters you find the need to reply to, mainly with negative condescending comments along with your sanctimonious self righteousness.
My comment merely stated the license I took while was in the Army and the step up to class 1 which I did as a civvi, not the circumstances behind why I chose to take it, taking cl3 was the quickest option to get my car license, among other courses I took was my bike test something I’ve not even used apart form bezzing down the runway at Kuwait airport,
Quick question, how the [zb] do you suppose kit and equipment get from point A to point B in the theatre? We step out the back of a chinook and it’s all laid out for us? Every Regt and Corps has gear that needs moving on wheels, or have you got the idea we phone a man with a van and all the logistical arrangements are done. It’s not just for troop carrying.
As for calling people willing to sign up whether it’s 3 years or 22 naive is bang out of order from someone who didn’t have the balls to sign up in the first place.
Perhaps you’d like to state how naive troops are regarding their employment status in places like Royal Wooton Bassett, Mill Hill, Port Stanley, Bazra or on your next feel obliged to attend Memorial Day.
Blimey you do get the hump over nothing.Which part of,the difference between a career driver who joins the army for and/or does the trade of a driver,v a ‘Soldier’ who has has,by necessity,to drive the minimum type of kit required to do the job of being a ‘Soldier’,didn’t you understand.IE the difference between being assigned to the RCT or what was the RASC etc v the Infantry or an artillery regiment etc.
The latter two very likely requiring the use of a class 3 type Bedford at most or a Gun tractor.As opposed to the former requiring the specialised skills of what could be termed a ‘driver’ by trade just as it said on the job title.The point being that there are no guarantees in the army as to who does what in that everyone does basic training as a Soldier first and then allocated their chosen or at least most suited trade on an arbitrary basis.
As for the bravery bs we’re all human and we’d all be liars if we said we ain’t scared to get into a war situation let alone getting shot over a silly argument in Ireland or the Falklands.On that note none of those who I was referring to joined up because they actually wanted to end up in a war.The naive bit was in them joining up on the basis that if you joined up to be a driver/engineer/electronics or whatever trade you’d be automatically and guaranteed to be allocated that trade when you finished your basic training.Just as my Father only ended up in the REME because firstly he was a bleedin good ( the best ) engineer I ever knew and they needed his services.Even in all that as I said he was then more often doing the job expected of an RASC ‘Driver’ than a REME ‘engineer’/mechanic.Which as I’ve said he wasn’t keen on while many of those who wanted to be drivers ended up doing anything but.Just as later.Which is what I was actually referring to.
Also bearing in mind that in my case bravery meant/means happily living under a mushroom cloud in that the next big war would have been/be the end of most of us regardless of age or civvy or military status.With the army being wiped out probably within the first 48 hours of it all kicking off in Europe and anyone living within 50 let alone 15 miles of London probably then being the first to go after that.
So there we have it there is no such thing as joining up to be a ‘driver’ in the army because you’re a soldier first and it’s just as likely that anyone who joins up to be a ‘driver’ will end up as a cook and an engineer as a ‘driver’.Or even all together on the front line with a rifle in their hand if required.But it’s far more likely that ‘if’ we’re talking about the trade of a ‘driver’ in the army they will need to have been serving in the RCT or now RLC to do it.In which case your driver training obviously wouldn’t have stopped at class 3.
the maoster:
As an ex military tank transporter driver I’d love to be able to say that the military turns out the best drivers, but I can’t. Like society as a whole there’s both good and bad drivers, wearing a flowery uniform doesn’t turn one into a driving God. IMO good drivers start way before they can actually drive by having a passion for driving and paying keen attention to what the driver of the vehicle they are being carried in does.I was obsessed with watching closely everything my Father did as he drove and he’d often question me as to why he’d done certain things whilst driving, which gave me a theoretical understanding of the process. When he finally let me off the leash in a field at about 10 years of age I knew exactly how to make the car move. Obviously I was rubbish but over the years my passion has seen me become slight less rubbish!
I’d guess my Father fitted into the grey area in between.IE had no real passion to drive a tank transporter and probably understandably less so after doing the job in a combat situation.Then had no interest whatsoever in driving trucks for a living and in fact tried to put me off of the job later.While from what I’d heard he even preferred riding his motorbike than driving a car.Although you wouldn’t find anyone better when it came to fixing a bike to a tank.Or making something useful from a piece of metal including for a time in the aerospace industry.
They make good tipper drivers. They will always do whats asked of them, drive well off road and think nothing of being boot deep in mud. All the best drivers I know are ex uk guards regiments or ex polish army i’m ex RGJ and was just handed the keys to a 4 tonner with no training. Having said that the worse driver I knew was Lituanian ex army just destroyed anything he drove.
tippers and earthmoving machinery seems to be their forte.
working on their own initiative seems to be beyond the few ive seen working around here.
theyre ok in tesco and stuff thats regimentally up their own h/s ■■■,but they dont seem to do well working for general haulage in the most.
mabey its the different world of tanglife that bamboozles them 
UKtramp:
I doubt many will disagree with me on this, I learnt to drive hgv in the army, RCT 1979.
I didn’t know the Army taught Cadets how to drive or am I mixing you up with somebody else?
Am beginning to wonder why I waste my time and internet data coming onto the site now sometimes … ■■?
raymundo:
Am beginning to wonder why I waste my time and internet data coming onto the site now sometimes … ■■?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
well at least theres only 1 of you wasting it.
uktrampjtsdozydamon must be ploughing through his…he must have unlimited data as well as no life in reality land. 
Could this be the same soldier boy I had to take out for the day to show him the ropes. We left Hull and he drove to Wolverhampton. I left him at Four Ashes and drove home alone
Liability isn’t the word
Someone started a thread the other day, about how drivers entertain themselves during the day, well here’s how UKTramp entertains himself, by sitting all day thinking of a ■■■■■■ way to get a reaction within the forum, then sits back and gets his jollies reading it back. Got to give it to him he knows how to divide opinion.
Don’t know about him being in the British Army, more like the ■■■■■■■ Sally Army.
Do that badly in your army entrance exam that even being in the infantry is too mentally taxing for you so your only option is to get put into the RCT/ RLC as a driver or not go in the army at all.
jakethesnake:
There are good ex army drivers and there are good civilian drivers but there are plenty of both that are attrocious.
So what you’re saying is being ex army makes no difference whatsoever.
Nite Owl:
jakethesnake:
There are good ex army drivers and there are good civilian drivers but there are plenty of both that are attrocious.So what you’re saying is being ex army makes no difference whatsoever.
Did I say that? It may do, it may not, I am sure you will work it out soon.
I saw 3 army tank transporters, loaded stuck in membury services, lorrys all parked in bays they could not get past, 1 tried to go between pumps, to wide, at that point I left