Hi everyone,
Was wondering if anyone could share their experiances of driver assessments. Are they as intense as your test? What manouvers do they make you do? How long are they?
Any advise greatly recieved!!
Jay 
Jtheraver:
Hi everyone,Was wondering if anyone could share their experiances of driver assessments. Are they as intense as your test? What manouvers do they make you do? How long are they?
Any advise greatly recieved!!
Jay
You’re usually asked to do a drive which from my own experience is usually about 30/45 minutes, if it’s class 1 you’ll be asked to couple/uncouple a trailer, reverse into a bay or area between trailers/vehicles and complete a questionnaire about tacho rules ec’t and you will usually be asked to complete a copy of a tachograph chart based on a fictitious scenario, though that may not apply if the company don’t have vehicles with analogue tachographs.
How intense it is will largly depend on the assessor but I’ve always found them to be quite relaxed as long as you appear to know what you’re doing.
Whatever you’ve been told during training be sure to undestand that for most companies brushing the kerb with a tyre is an immediate assessment fail.
mine wasn that bad the guy was sorted told me to chill out as he knew i was a bag of nerves as for the actual assesment they asked me about daily check had me pick a trailer up took it out for about 20 mins then had to reverse it back into the spot were i got it from then drop trailer prety simple really
Well I had 2! class 1 assessments last week. And passed both.
I’ve not got Any class 1 experience so was a bit worried. The first was for eddie stobarts which took around half hour with a couple/uncoupling. I Was safe and didn’t curb it.
The second was for the place I’m doing agency work in rigids at the moment. That was 2 and a half hours! The assessor was great though as he knew I had no experience in arctics. As he said “your not on a driving test, I’m here to help and guide you”
I was definitely NOT as nervous as I was on my c&e test!
Just enjoy iy and relax and drive safely with all round observation and forward thinking and you should be ok.
Btw. The manouvers they had me do at stobarts was a reverse your trailer in at an angle. And the other one was a strait reverse in
As cliffton says show you can do a daily check. Don’t forget to open the trailer doors too! To check your load
Just had one last week. Same as been said really, had to show the walk round checks, then couple up a trailer, drove around the yard, backed it onto a couple of bays on the way round and then out onto the road for half an hour.
Ive got no class 1 experience at all as i passed in a wagon an drag and since then only riven rigids and that was 3 years ago, i was quite nervous but explained to him before we started my lack of experience which didnt bother him in the slightest. I could of done better on the reversing but the assesor was great about it and actually helped by doing a couple of reverses whilst i watched and he explained what i was doing wrong and then i tried it and did improve slightly.
At the end of it i was sure my poor reversing would of been enough for him to say come back after a bit of practice but to my suprise he passed me saying that although i could do with some practice on it that will come when i start the job! And because i drove safely he passed me and i start the job in 2 weeks.
I really think as long as your safe and not knocking down old woman at the pelican crossing you should be fine, not sure how much experience you have but everyone has to start somewhere and in my experience the assesors are well aware of that and happy to give us newbies a chance!
Good luck