HGV Training in County Londonderry

COURSE IN County Londonderry

Getting an HGV licence is all about learning what you need to know and then testing well. It is not especially difficult for those with the right aptitude, but even the best students are wise not to take their exams lightly. Exams are everything when you choose a career as a professional HGV or PCV driver, as they are the only means the government has of deciding whether or not you are qualified to drive. In order to prepare you for those exams, we offer HGV training in County Londonderry.

Located in the northern portion of Northern Ireland, County Londonderry is known as much for its sprawling coastline as it is its interior forested areas. Throughout the county are dozens of towns and villages bustling with daily activity. And all of these local areas depend on bus and lorry drivers for personal transportation and access to affordable consumer goods. Things just wouldn’t be the same without the hard work and dedication of professional drivers.

If you are a young person just starting out, professional driving is a career we believe you should look at. It is even a good career choice for older people who may be suffering under redundancy or who might just be ready for something new. Driving a PCV or HGV for a living has a lot going for it, including:

• Competitive pay in line with national averages
• Above average job security
• Opportunities for regional and overseas travel
• The ability to work independently
• Plenty of room for advancement.

Professional driving is an excellent career choice despite what you may have heard in the past. And now is a great time to get going, with the national driver shortage as severe as it is. Companies are competing like never before to acquire and retain the best drivers in the business, driving wages up and giving those with licences the upper hand.

What the HGV Driver Does Every Day

It should be obvious that the HGV driver spends the majority of his or her day driving from point to point. In light of that, our HGV training in County Londonderry devotes a significant amount of time teaching drivers the actual skills required to drive safely. These skills are tested by examiners before a new driver can get a licence. Between classroom and hands-on training, our students learn things such as:

• how to correctly handle an HGV in various conditions
• how to safely conduct controlled stops
• how to properly accelerate, with and without loads
• how to safely make cornering manoeuvres
• how to safely and correctly make reversing manoeuvres.

Professional drivers need other skills as well because they do more than just drive. They also supervise the loading and unloading of cargo, plan delivery routes, coordinate delivery schedules with dispatchers, complete paperwork, and maintain legally compliant log books. All of these things have to be done with a mind toward safe operating procedures and legal compliance.

Most of the additional tasks are also tested by way of the case studies and practical demonstration tests required of new drivers. So what do we do? We make sure our drivers are thoroughly trained so that they have the necessary body of knowledge to satisfy examiners. The point of our training is to make sure that every driver passing through our doors is prepared to successfully take his or her exams and go on to be a productive driver who is ready to get started on the very first day of work.

The Dual Purpose of Exam Training

The HGV Training Centre is an organisation committed to preparing driving students to take their exams. Of course, we also want to train our drivers to be the best employees they can be, but we have to give priority to testing given that the exams are the only way the government has to verify a driver deserves a commercial driving licence. This mindset leads us to train our drivers in two different ways, for two different reasons.

The first reason for exam training is to impart the information drivers will need to successfully pass their tests. For example, the HGV theory test includes 19 videos in which the candidate must identify 20 developing hazards. It would be foolish for a candidate to sit for that exam without knowing what constitutes a developing hazard in the eyes of test creators. We impart that knowledge so that drivers know what to look for during the exam.

The second purpose of exam training is to teach students how to take tests. There is a big difference between knowing the information itself and knowing how to apply it in a testing situation. Again, we will use the HGV theory test as an example.

The theory test is a two-part exam that also includes 100 multiple-choice questions alongside the 19 videos. Where the videos are concerned, students are graded by how quickly and accurately they identify the developing hazards. We teach them the skills they need to do it correctly. As for the multiple-choice questions, these are designed to thoroughly test the candidate’s knowledge by asking things in ways that might be indirect or ambiguous. We teach our students how to figure out what is actually being asked so that they can give the right answer.

Learning how to test is just as important as learning the information necessary to pass. We do not leave the ‘how’ to chance; we teach our drivers proven test-taking strategies.

Our Training Works

As a leading provider of driver training in the UK, we offer our HGV training in County Londonderry along with identical programmes in more than four dozen different locations. How did we get to become the largest provider in the United Kingdom? By developing a training approach that works. Across all of our training programmes, our drivers enjoy a first-time pass rate in excess of 90%. For purposes of comparison, the average pass rate for the LGV test in the UK is only about 55%.

Our training approach works because it takes advantage of short-term memory. Rather than subjecting our students to long lectures and prolonged classes that require the absorption of too much material all at once, our training approach is designed to present information in short, concentrated bursts. The result is a fast-paced and intense training method that enables students to learn the information, understand it, retain it, and then recall it at testing time.

It certainly helps that tests are taken in stages rather than all at once. The theory test is the first one; it must be taken and passed in order for the new driver to continue training. The second test is the case studies test that can be taken at any time during the training process. The third and fourth tests are the driving skills and practical demonstration tests. They are taken during the same session at the completion of driver training.

The HGV Training Centre is thrilled to be able to offer HGV training in County Londonderry. We hope you will consider training with us if you are planning to embark on a career as a professional PCV or HGV driver. We put hundreds of students through our courses every month; you could be one of them in the near future. Just contact us to learn more about the next class forming in your area.