Unfortunately this is the perception of us to the majority of the public. I doubt women will change anything because the biggest majority have no interest in driving lorries.
Until we get rid of the dead heads in the industry nothing will change. The only way to do that is to make getting an LGV licence a lot harder and sorting out the ludicrous CPC and make it an exam where dead heads have no chance of passing.
Problem solved…Fat chance.
Uncle Albie:
Unfortunately this is the perception of us to the majority of the public. I doubt women will change anything because the biggest majority have no interest in driving lorries.
Until we get rid of the dead heads in the industry nothing will change. The only way to do that is to make getting an LGV licence a lot harder and sorting out the ludicrous CPC and make it an exam where dead heads have no chance of passing.Problem solved…Fat chance.
I’m with you on the LGV licence being made harder to get, maybe with a 12 month probationary period but the DCPC?
Mixed feelings, I’ve never belived it is a genuine entity anyway tbh, but rather a combination of a money raiser/industry creator, and a ‘keeping up appearances with the public excersise’ with no real substance.
The thing is if you make it genuine AND an exam style qualification, a lot of good drivers are not the best educated and/or find exam scenarios very difficult, on the other hand many drivers who are well educated will never be drivers as long as their arses have holes, and a combination of both categorys also…so what do we do with it.? Who knows.
As for women, why not, I know a few girls here and abroad who were very good drivers, …also for me personally, I could compare tassly curtain ideas with them 
robroy:
Uncle Albie:
Unfortunately this is the perception of us to the majority of the public. I doubt women will change anything because the biggest majority have no interest in driving lorries.
Until we get rid of the dead heads in the industry nothing will change. The only way to do that is to make getting an LGV licence a lot harder and sorting out the ludicrous CPC and make it an exam where dead heads have no chance of passing.Problem solved…Fat chance.
I’m with you on the LGV licence being made harder to get, maybe with a 12 month probationary period but the DCPC?
Mixed feelings, I’ve never belived it is a genuine entity anyway tbh, but rather a combination of a money raiser/industry creator, and a ‘keeping up appearances with the public excersise’ with no real substance.
The thing is if you make it genuine AND an exam style qualification, a lot of good drivers are not the best educated and/or find exam scenarios very difficult, on the other hand many drivers who are well educated will never be drivers as long as their arses have holes, and a combination of both categorys also…so what do we do with it.? Who knows.
As for women, why not, I know a few girls here and abroad who were very good drivers, …also for me personally, I could compare tassly curtain ideas with them
I’d rather see the DCPC got rid of, and then see all driving licences(full and vocational) time limited, if every person holding any form of driving licence had too resit every 10 years, then maybe joe public and some of our so called professional driving colleagues 
might just start taking right to drive more seriously, and stop acting like complete knobs whilst out and about on the highways and byways 
Would cure congestion overnight I reckon, though obviously there’d be a shortage of bus drivers, that will be needed to cope with increased need for public transport to handle the needs of the incompetents who will fail to regain their licences 
The DFT are reportedly looking at aligning DCPC with NVQ style assessments whilst at work.
So maybe that’d be a step in the right direction. If assessment OK, driving, customer skills, paperwork etc then the licence and DCPC continues
shep532:
The DFT are reportedly looking at aligning DCPC with NVQ style assessments whilst at work.So maybe that’d be a step in the right direction. If assessment OK, driving, customer skills, paperwork etc then the licence and DCPC continues
Interesting, who would be doing the assessments, in house or outside evaluation 
but maybe a step in the right direction to a more respected qualification. Most other industries have some kind of skills assessment and periodic appraisals.
How can a job paying £8.50p/h with a 60-70 hr week be seen as “professional”.
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Munchkin:
How can a job paying £8.50p/h with a 60-70 hr week be seen as “professional”.Sent from my X17 using Tapatalk
Agreed, but until we as body of drivers accept that training will professionalise us as a work force, how will we be able force better pay. May be its chicken and egg, but what ever it is it aint working right for us as a work force, so we need to change it, and maybe this is the way. And yes I’m sceptical too
eddie snax:
robroy:
Uncle Albie:
Unfortunately this is the perception of us to the majority of the public. I doubt women will change anything because the biggest majority have no interest in driving lorries.
Until we get rid of the dead heads in the industry nothing will change. The only way to do that is to make getting an LGV licence a lot harder and sorting out the ludicrous CPC and make it an exam where dead heads have no chance of passing.Problem solved…Fat chance.
I’m with you on the LGV licence being made harder to get, maybe with a 12 month probationary period but the DCPC?
Mixed feelings, I’ve never belived it is a genuine entity anyway tbh, but rather a combination of a money raiser/industry creator, and a ‘keeping up appearances with the public excersise’ with no real substance.
The thing is if you make it genuine AND an exam style qualification, a lot of good drivers are not the best educated and/or find exam scenarios very difficult, on the other hand many drivers who are well educated will never be drivers as long as their arses have holes, and a combination of both categorys also…so what do we do with it.? Who knows.
As for women, why not, I know a few girls here and abroad who were very good drivers, …also for me personally, I could compare tassly curtain ideas with them [emoji38]
I’d rather see the DCPC got rid of, and then see all driving licences(full and vocational) time limited, if every person holding any form of driving licence had too resit every 10 years, then maybe joe public and some of our so called professional driving colleagues
That means regular encounters with this country’s thoroughly unprofessional driver training industry - brokers, tetchy or downright abusive instructors, thousands of pounds in fees, potentially multiple attempts to pass a test to do something I’ve already proved I can do perfectly well. And are we supposed to take both classes every ten years?
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The problem with this haulage game as I see it is this; Far too many companies at it and most of them are desperately trying to undercut each other in order to get customers business. We also have lots of drivers who have no other strings to their bow, and as such (dependant on their financial situation), feel they HAVE to take crappy paid jobs to pay the bills and feed the kids.
This then results in many drivers (especially trampers), thinking " I am in the truck all week, may as well slow everything down and get as mush cash as possible ", so we end up with a situation where hauliers are struggling in many cases to make a profit, but have quite a high wages bill because of dragging the job out.
Surely it would be better to push for better hourly rate in conjunction with making sure drivers don’t take the ■■■■, this way drivers are not doing quite so many hours for the same money, and will be less tired. This should result in less mistakes made and potentially more enthusiastic drivers.
More intelligent and efficient planners would also help too. Ultimately if drivers refuse to sign up to places where the pay is crap, these hauliers will be forced to pay up, or fold up.
Nothing will change the ■■■■ poor image of drivers until name plates from screens and peek a boo frilly curtains attempting to obscure the driver are outlawed…
So you would rather it be drivers in plain bog standard trucks throw litter everywhere, destroy grass verges, ■■■■ all over the place, crap in bags, tailgate, etc ?
AndrewG:
Nothing will change the ■■■■ poor image of drivers until name plates from screens and peek a boo frilly curtains attempting to obscure the driver are outlawed…
I reckon for what it’s worth mate that the real problems in this job far outweigh curtains and nameplates 
…, and if they are the only problems that you have with the industry, I want a job where you work.
(Btw if I get one promise to remove the curtains and nameplate if it bothers you THAT much )
eagerbeaver:
The problem with this haulage game as I see it is this; Far too many companies at it and most of them are desperately trying to undercut each other in order to get customers business. We also have lots of drivers who have no other strings to their bow, and as such (dependant on their financial situation), feel they HAVE to take crappy paid jobs to pay the bills and feed the kids.This then results in many drivers (especially trampers), thinking " I am in the truck all week, may as well slow everything down and get as mush cash as possible ", so we end up with a situation where hauliers are struggling in many cases to make a profit, but have quite a high wages bill because of dragging the job out.
Surely it would be better to push for better hourly rate in conjunction with making sure drivers don’t take the ■■■■, this way drivers are not doing quite so many hours for the same money, and will be less tired. This should result in less mistakes made and potentially more enthusiastic drivers.
More intelligent and efficient planners would also help too. Ultimately if drivers refuse to sign up to places where the pay is crap, these hauliers will be forced to pay up, or fold up.
I agree hourly rates should be increased BUT if a driver is going to drag the job out on £8ph he sure as ■■■■ will do it on £9/£10/£15ph as well.
30yrs ago working as “personnel” in a company was seen as entry level or a dead end job. Now they’ve letters after their names and handsome salaries.
Discover how they turned it around and that’s maybe the answer?
Not just more legislation = more money as truck driving has the former but not the latter compared to 30yrs ago.
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IndigoJo:
That means regular encounters with this country’s thoroughly unprofessional driver training industry - brokers, tetchy or downright abusive instructors, thousands of pounds in fees, potentially multiple attempts to pass a test to do something I’ve already proved I can do perfectly well. And are we supposed to take both classes every ten years?
Indigo Jo you sound like you have a problem with everybody but yourself. There are 1000’s of drivers that think they can do the job perfectly well but that is their opinion and a lot of them are wrong as we can see by the number of dead heads in our industry who can’t string a sentence together never mind drive a truck.
Other than yours some good comments.
IndigoJo:
That means regular encounters with this country’s thoroughly unprofessional driver training industry - brokers, tetchy or downright abusive instructors, …
Hi IndigoJo,
Whilst I can agree with some of what you wrote, it looks like you’ve painted the whole training world with a 6" paintbrush.
I can honestly tell you that unprofessional and abusive instructors are very much in the minority these days, and any decent training provider company will come down like a ton of bricks on a bad instructor if they value their own reputation.
The DCPC should be mandatory modules with a test at the end and the pass mark set to what other industries do which is 85%. That’d sort the wheat out from the chaff and you can bet basic drivers hours questions on this forum would come to an end.
If you want firms to value drivers, you need to find a mechanism of grading their drivers coupled with an incentive to employ the better drivers. Maybe we need driver passports where skirmishes with the Police, DVSA are combined with accidents, training and years of service to give a driver a score. Then make insurance for the drivers/firm dependent on the overall combined score of it’s drivers. So have a team of good scoring drivers and your running costs are lower. Sounds OK in theory but not sure it would work in practice…
Tin hat on ready for some flack!
As someone else has already said, it is all down to money. If a firm has undercut someone else to get a particular job, then it is not going to be able to pay the driver anything special. As a result, it can (rightly) only expect the dross to keep the right-hand seat warm in its trucks.
If jobs were done for a ‘proper’ rate, then wages would increase and said dross would have nowhere to go because the job of driving a lorry would become more attractive. Plumbers and the like do not work for £8 or whatever an hour, and you can bet that that is factored into what they charge for their services.
But meanwhile, instead of doing something positive about it, the haulage industry and its trade body would rather spend time whinging to the government and whoever else is stupid enough to listen, telling it that there should be some kind of financial support to train drivers and alleviate the so-called ‘shortage’. Well, no. Said shortage has been created by the industry itself via its arcane and outdated working practices, and taxes should not be spent to subsidise the usual Halfwit Haulage idiots’ raging battle to undercut each other by removing what is a legitimate cost of doing business (training) from their budgets.
robroy:
AndrewG:
Nothing will change the ■■■■ poor image of drivers until name plates from screens and peek a boo frilly curtains attempting to obscure the driver are outlawed…I reckon for what it’s worth mate that the real problems in this job far outweigh curtains and nameplates
(Btw if I get one promise to remove the curtains and nameplate if it bothers you THAT much
Honestly mate, it was tongue in cheek, i wasnt being serious