Other than the driving aspects
I can maintain records log sheets
Use basic IT equipment
Use manual handling techniques
Monitor equipment
Maintain equipment
Work as a team player
Do you think Im skilled
There is no skill in becoming a lorry driver, the skill comes with the constant practice that gives you the ability to do something with your wagon to make yours and others lives easier.
I can put together an entire TV broadcast system. I can operate a broadcast camera and other broadcast equipment yet I find backing into a bay the hardest thing to do.
F-reds:
There is no skill in becoming a lorry driver, the skill comes with the constant practice that gives you the ability to do something with your wagon to make yours and others lives easier.
^this, the skill is developed post test.
We are all different, we never consider each other in our every day lives, we just take each other for granted.
We seem to prize the highest paid, yet look upon the lowest paid with disdain, we somehow put each other into boxes, those boxes have both monetary and social values affixed to them…That is our most basic and the first of our errors.
If you are still with me, then you will know what it is I am trying to convey, if you do not understand thus far, then you will almost certainly be behaving and acting as I have already stated 
All the time we are trying to put others into boxes, we will never be released from the boxes ourselves…“Skill” is just another box.
To be labelled as skilled or semi skilled is down to perception. You need a level of skill to drive a lorry. You need a level of skill to drive a car. To do the LGV job you have to have pass more tests and form greater understanding of how a large vehicle handles. A lot these days will not have (touchwood) experienced a tyre blow out on a drive axle or a swinging trailer so to talk about these risks can’t be said to be skills. A risk of a perceived event that may happen that isn’t trained for or learned from productively by exposure isn’t a skill, it’s just something you hope doesn’t happen as you haven’t really been trained for it and tested on competence.
It’s fair to say reversing an artic still requires practice for the average car driver convert, so its still comes under some sort of skill level of job in my book. I think it’s over egging it a bit to say you need IT skills or skills or paperwork skills.
I think that the tradesmen who have spent 3, 4, 5 or more years learning their job and acquiring City and Guilds as an apprentice, would rather tend to disagree that a 10 day training course qualifies you as a skilled man.
Radar19:
I can put together an entire TV broadcast system. I can operate a broadcast camera and other broadcast equipment yet I find backing into a bay the hardest thing to do.
(off topic) Nice to know there is another of me on here - I’m the engineer for a Grass Valley / BTS OB unit.
cav551:
I think that the tradesmen who have spent 3, 4, 5 or more years learning their job and acquiring City and Guilds as an apprentice, would rather tend to disagree that a 10 day training course qualifies you as a skilled man.
I didn’t like to say but that was my perception of a skilled job to be honest. Something like a farrier, steeplejack or stonemason. That’s a very old fashioned way of looking at the definition I’ll admit. Back in t’ old days the tier worked along the lines of non skilled, semi skilled, skilled then the true professions. That’s the way it worked years ago before pontius was a pilot.
Look at the big picture, the training and the actual test is a bit of a joke, the pay is not good the hours are long and un-sociable, therefore we can conclude the job to be un-skilled.
cav551:
I think that the tradesmen who have spent 3, 4, 5 or more years learning their job and acquiring City and Guilds as an apprentice, would rather tend to disagree that a 10 day training course qualifies you as a skilled man.
Great post…Bang on…
kr79:
Im no expert but id imagine a modern train is easier to drive than a steam engine and haveing things like failsafe signals.
Its strong union backing thats enabled train drivers to keep pay and conditions up.
Train drivers have good wages because they have the ability to cause widespread disruption at the drop of a hat. Sure, truck drivers could cause disruption but it’d require cooperation across many major operators, whereas on the trains just one operators drivers walking out can send services in whole regions of the country to their knees.
Bob Crow gets dubbed as some sort of peoples champion for what he has done for tube workers, but it’s ■■■■ easy to get what you want when just one workforce can hold the entire city of London to ransom. It’d be nigh on impossible to coordinate a truck drivers strike because whilst you’d have 2 companies drivers ■■■■■■ off with their wages & up for it, you’d have another 2 where the drivers are being paid well and have no interest in walking out and losing money.
There is actually a UK government league table that puts HGV quite low
Turn the key put it in D and away you go. Not brain science or rocket surgery really 
Let’s face it RDC and pin to pin isn’t hard work. The skill comes into it going to the places where you pull up look at it and think Oooooo that’s a bit on the tide side (a couple of inch spare each side) but still manage to get in there get the job done and out leaving a happy customer and no damage to the truck. Computers have taken the hard work and a lot of the thinking out of the job. Just about everything goes on a curtain sider a reefer or box van so not many bother with straps and rope and sheet is just about dead. Just close the back doors/curtains and job done
BillyHunt:
This looks pretty skilled to me.
WOW! Drive must really like his/her music to carry headphones that big on the side of his/her lorry .
I’ll get me coat 
I did a 5 yr apprentiship at rolls Royce in bristol,eventually passing and going on too work in the development machine shop at patch way,universal grinder then went on jig- boring,very skilled job .
But I never enjoyed it,always wanted too drive trucks from a little one ,a dream,but as a lot of kids followed in my dad’s footsteps ,as he said you not doing a dead end job like truck driving .
One day I just said I don’t want to do this anymore,I want to drive trucks .
The rests history ,so I don’t think skilled/ no- skilled really matters ,it’s all about what you want to do,doesn’t matter what people think .
dozy:
I did a 5 yr apprentiship at rolls Royce in bristol,eventually passing and going on too work in the development machine shop at patch way,universal grinder then went on jig- boring,very skilled job .
But I never enjoyed it,always wanted too drive trucks from a little one ,a dream,but as a lot of kids followed in my dad’s footsteps ,as he said you not doing a dead end job like truck driving .
One day I just said I don’t want to do this anymore,I want to drive trucks .
The rests history ,so I don’t think skilled/ no- skilled really matters ,it’s all about what you want to do,doesn’t matter what people think .
Very true if you do a job you hate it will ruin your life
if you do a job you hate it will ruin your life
Never a truer word was written
All in all, in my opinion when you look at what’s involved in being a truck driver, ie all the laws, rules and regulations, vehicle weight, load distribution, load security, vehicle height, coupling/uncoupling, cost of vehicle/load, the near impossible places one sometimes has to get a vehicle into, the way you have to deal with other drivers on the roads who have never driven trucks (?) and often don’t understand what’s involved or even often don’t care for their own safety. These are some of the points that spring to mind, admittedly turning an auto switch and moving the steering wheel is childs play, but I would certainly class truck driving as very much more than an unskilled job. Maybe if we keep telling everyone its p*ss easy and not skilled then we can expect to keep getting offers of £7.00 per hour. 
I think that a skill is something someone learns, whether you study at a University for 3 years to get a degree at the end, is just as skilled as a mechanic, carpenter, plasterer, builder, truck driver. The last one is to many non skilled, but we too have trained, first step is a driving licence and for some they fall apart on the test, then as you go up the ladder through different classes as a driver you slowly develop the skill needed to do the job, a military man would do the same when learning to operate a tank for example.
So many drivers have learnt to operate various pieces of equipment within the transport system, low loaders ( stgo ) flats to be able to secure any load on them with chains, ropes, straps, sheets etc, tautliners, to open curtains, and to secure the goods inside, tankers whether liquid or powder each has its own skill, in the early days drivers had to learn to strip down a tilt and put it back together again, but each driver on the road today has perfected his skill in his chosen trade, even to a container driver who had to learn to adjust that piece of equipment which changes regularly and often with no help but often with advice from other drivers.
The units of today are more complicated than they were, a fuller range change or eaton twin split were words commonly used back then, but time moves on, equipment around us gets modernised, and so the introduction of the autobox in trucks was born, and i believe it was to stop the abuse of playing tunes on the gearbox by inexperienced drivers ( yes i played tunes too ) but also to give drivers a more degree of comfort, and to ease the worry of bosses who took on a new driver to find he couldnt or wouldnt drive that complicated machine. I have developed many skills over the years in this industry and i am confident of being able to work in any environment, drive any machine or pull and operate most trailers on the road, so therefore i class myself as skilled as a university graduate but without the papers ( dcpc approved ) And not forgetting the skill of the left hand drive as any one will tell you their first time experience and never to forget, then there is a map reading skill although with the advent of the sat nav system takes a lot of worry out of the job whether at home or somewhere in europe and beyond, but whatever it is we are skilled but not recognised as such, just dont put yourself down.