Hi Guys
Got directed to this forum recently and I must say its great it’s answered nearly all the queries I had about weather or not I should take the leap and take my HGV test.
What I am after is any recommendations for an instructor in the derby area or nottingham area. I feel a recommendation goes a long way to rubber-stamping the quality of an instructor.
Cheers
Jase
Can’t help with a recommendation as not my area, but can offer a couple of pointers.
Phone round the local schools, talk to them and ask how much tuition you get for your money. Ask what vehicles they are running. The attitude of the person on the phone will say quite a lot about the school. For example when I phoned around, one school was “Yeah its a 3 1/2 day course with test at the end and cost £” that was the extent of the conversation, their vehicles that I had seen about were scabby little things little bigger than a 7.5t and did not impress me.
Another school was really helpful, told me how much it would cost for everything, sent me all the forms, offered me DVD’s and books to loan, told me tons of stuff about themselves. They also ran a full size Scania that was immaculate and were the only DSA registered instructor around. Their training was more expensive but it all looked good so I booked with them.
My instructor had me starting early mornings, took me to Central London late one night, and promised that if I could not get something right we’d stay out all bloody night till I’d cracked it. Personally I felt that I had been given top class training well worth the extra cash, I got a first time pass so saved money on retests too. If I wanted to do Class 1 I’d not go anywhere else with my own money.
It is easy to get seduced by the low prices of someone like Sterling, at the time they wanted not a lot more for Class 1 & 2 + CPC but were running a little Iveco flat wag & drag outfit. Which I can’t imagine would be a whole lot of use when faced with a Daf XF and full size curtain side trailer.
Whatever happens good luck and keep us posted.
back to the top,
Anyone out there who can reccomend anyone. I spoke CLG in notts the other day seemd good but i dont want to dive in and go with the 1st 1 i speak to without checking anyone else out.
cheers
Hey
New to the Forum and relativly new to driving HGV’s.
I live just south of Derby and i used two different HGV driving trainers.
The First was John W Smithurst in Nottingham. He was a good instructor and taught alot which other people might not, [ i.e. he teaches you to double de-clutch - ok maybe not something that you need to use on a daily basis but something which i think is useful ]. John’s bad point was that he tended to tell you what do do the whole time, he would talk you through each junction what to look for and what to do, which is good however it was a shock to have to start thinking on my own.
The Second instructor who i used and passed with was Chris Woolliscroft in Ashbourne. I found Chris to be very knowledgeable and his teaching methods suited me alot better, as he instructs two people at once [so you can see somebody else drive and it makes you think i’d of done it this way, or i didn’t think of that], chris also didn’t talk me through much, he left me to do something and then if i did it wrong he’d tell me and then at some point later on we’d do it again and then its up to you to take heed of what he said and do it right.
Truck wise Chris has a M reg Daf 85, it has a splitter box and it also has high and low ratios, which gives you something extra to learn. John has a Renault Premium with a Tap Over Style Box [ basically when you go up the split box instead of a flipping a switch you have to give the gear stick a good tap either left or right]. Both trucks i found to be good to drive, Johns did have more visibility the tap over box took a while to get used to. Chris’ truck wasn’t necessiarly easier to drive but i found that i could visualise the size of the truck and when i got used to it i found that i didn’t worry quite so much about the size.
Now the best instructor would be half chris and half john, because each taught extra bits which the other didn’t, however at the end of the day that cant happen so my reccomadation would be Chris purely because of his teaching methods which i think were better than Johns.
Hope this helps, both guys can be found in the yellow pages, if not i’ve still got their numbers.
or this chap mate, vehicles are popular in the industry, instructor wise, i can let you know because i,m doing a refresher course with him, starting tommorrow 
i just knew that link thingy wouldn’t turn out right