cieranc:
There’s not a cat in hells chance we would let any of our lads drive a wrecker on a wag n drag license !!!
If an artic is ‘E’, why do you need a CE to drive one?
Must admit, I’m not up on wag n drag rules, but would have thought it a bit dubious if the wagon (wrecker) was 30 foot long, and the drag (artic) was 55 foot long.
One exemption for recovery drivers is that, if an artic is empty it can be classed as 1 trailer on the wrecker. But if its loaded it’s 2 trailers (locomotive).
Can anyone point me towards the rules about this (wrecker+artic on a cat C) 'cos there’s no heavy lads I know who drive on a cat C, all have class 1?
def cant drive it on a C alone as mentioned but C E with 102 is allowed, think there was a post on this a while back somewere
this is quoting from fta yearbook recovery vehicle section…the driver of a breakdown/recovery lorry of 17,000kg gvw being used to suspend tow a broken down vehicle over 750kg gvw would require catogory C plus E restricted to drawbars (or full C plus E unrestricted).if a rigid drawbar is being used to recover the casualty the licence required by the breakdown driver would remain unchanged.
Is that over 17,000kg gvw or maximum 17,000kgs gvw mate?
Reason I ask is, our little lift and shift motor is a 4x2 Volvo FM, we chopped a tractor unit and stretched it, remounted old gear onto it. It’s GTW is the original 40 tons, it weighs 17,000 itself empty, so can only tow 23,000. It physically won’t lift a loaded 26 tonner as the front axle goes too light, so all it gets used for is winching and rigids upto 23 tons.
So maybe that makes sense for a wag n drag, 17 ton prime mover and 10 ton trailer perhaps?
All our wreckers have train weights from 65 -150 tons.
At the last place I worked the boss as adamant that only cat C was required to tow an artic.
Personally I wouldn’t like to put it to the test if it all went pear shaped
Now, I can’t help with the old rules, I didn’t pass my car test until '98, so even when I passed my bus test in a ‘crash box’ leyland leopard, I still couldn’t drive a 7.5t van or tow a caravan (could drive a bendy bus though )
So, when I passed my ‘C’, I still could only tow 750kg, so not even able to tow a caravan. My boss told me I was ok with 1 on the back of the recovery truck for short distances and I’d be ok with a car on the spec lift, not sure if this was true or not, but even he said that I needed C+E for the Heavy recovery truck.
Ours was a Scumia 580 and weighed knocking on 30t on its own. Don’t know if that makes a difference or not.
