Do we have a shortage of skilled drivers or a failed training system?
I am just going to give you 4 quick stories, and let you decide what the problem is?
Story One -The Pool Room: I grew up in a house with a Dad that was a close to Darryl Kerrigan and his Castle as you could get. We even had the fake wood panel pool room, an extension Dad built himself naturally without any building permits. It was a brilliant pool room, perfectly built for a 6 by 3 pool table.
However a mate of a mate of a mate had a bargain on an 8 by 4, so that’s what went in the room. So that games of pool at our house ended up adding the extra-dimension of body contortions to make shots.
Ok so where I am going with this,
Well in the pool room proudly hung Dad’s A-Grade Mechanics certificate. He was proud of it and so we were. He earnt it, he went to night school, worked during the day and even did extra jobs on the weekends to put himself through night school whilst keeping us fed and happy.
Dad was proud of what he achieved and so were we.
Story Two – The Bin. A while back, we were talking with a truck driver and something came up about qualifications. He said,
“yeah, I got some bit of paper, it’s some certificate or other, some bloke sat in the cab with me for a few hours and asked me a couple of questions and I got this certificate.”
I think it was a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) issued Certificate for Driving Ops. I think because the driver had no idea where it was and really didn’t care. He thought it may have even been in the bin.
Story Three – The Paddock. Like most of us closer to retirement than high school, I learnt to drive in the paddocks with my uncles or around the truck yard as a kid when Dad was servicing the trucks.
“Go back that truck up over there” Off you would go, only to be told that was #$%@ing awful – “do it again”.
And on it would go over the years before I turned 18, as the uncles or Dad would tell you do it again and do it properly this time.
However one day, they looked at the way I did it, and said begrudgingly, “yeah, not bad”.
And with that you knew you had graduated from the paddock, importantly they trusted you to do the job. (ps: not a hope they would now, I quickly learnt others had far more talent than I would ever have in being able to drive trucks.)
The point being I was made to practice and practice until they had confidence in my ability to drive a truck.
Story Four – 1940 Britain. During the Battle of Britain, many new pilots had as little as 10 hours flying time before they were sent in to battle. Despite their courage, these inexperienced and ill trained pilots suffered the highest casualties and also caused the most damage to planes during landing.
Do you see any parallels with the way we currently train truck drivers?
The Questions.
1. How long does it take to get say, a HR truck driving licence?
2. When you get it, does that make them a truck driver?
3. Is the person with the truck licence, job ready and safe, proud of what they have achieved and have earnt respect for having completed it?
4. If they then complete a Certificate of Driving operations, then are they job ready? Do employers value the Certificate?
4. So is it a skills shortage or just a failed training system?
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