Hello everyone and welcome to our latest newsletter. We have many new and exciting things to share with you this month including our two newest members of the team. This issue will also cover the new vehicles that we have purchased and a piece on our Driver CPC courses
Meet Our Newest Members Of The Team
Ian Barnett
Ian has been with the business for just two weeks now and as expected is fitting in very well. Having been a good customer for 10+ years Ian has previously worked with us to build one-off courses specific to Watsons fuels, where he started his career as an apprentice in the workshop, and over 32 years worked his way up to the position of property and engineering manager.
As a qualified Transport Manager, he is going to be an excellent asset to the team and will be delivering Transport Manager CPC, ADR, Forklift, and Driver CPC as well as being in the trucks from time to time.
In order for Ian to be able to deliver these courses to candidates, he will be on an intense training plan for the next 6 months. Including First aid at work qualification, Award in education and training, Fire Marshall Training, Driver CPC Instructor course, Forklift Instructor course as well as lots of viewing and learning from our current Instructors
David Sandle
David joined us at the beginning of October and has made himself part of the team, quickly adapting to the Category C instructing, he was signed off to instruct in just 3 weeks!
Having come from a background in assessing and teaching Driver CPC, David is now part of the rigid instructional team at our Devizes site. He has previously worked for companies including GXO logistics and Honda, as well as having military background within the air force.
David has enjoyed his time working for us so far and finds it a friendly and enthusiastic working environment. His favourite part of instructing is passing on his knowledge to others which shows from the excellent feedback we receive from his candidates.
David got off to a flying start this week on his first unsupervised course which resulted in a pass!
Our New Vehicles
We have recently made some new additions to our fleet size by purchasing two Volvo FH tractor units from Wales & West. When we trialled the demonstrator, it was immediately clear that the gear box in the Volvo’s was far superior to any other brand as well as generally having a quality build throughout the vehicle. Since we added PA55BUD to the fleet as the first Volvo, Wales & West in Swindon have been absolutely fantastic which was another reason that the Volvo brand made sense for us.
With the new tractor units bringing us to six C+E vehicles, we needed to purchase some trailers to go with them. We ended up purchasing seven 34 foot trailers to replace our current fleet and give us the extra required for the new vehicles. This will allow us to have standardised trailers across the whole fleet and help us to keep the image we want to portray to customers and potential customers. This also means that if candidates have to swap vehicles throughout their course, there would be no difference to the training.
We have also added two new rigid vehicles and decided to trial the DAF CF. The two additions will be based at our Bristol site and have been themed with “Thank you NHS” and “Royal British Legion”. So far the DAF’s have been great additions to the fleet and the bigger cab size has gone down well with the instructors and candidates, giving them extra comfort throughout the duration of their course.
We also have two more rigids due to arrive in the early part of 2023. These will be brand new Volvo FE cabs supplied by Wales & West and built by Spectra. These will be run in trial against the DAF’s to see which comes out on top as the best training vehicle ready for more replacements in 2023/2024.
Driver CPC Course
The Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (Driver CPC) is a qualification for professional bus and lorry drivers. Anyone that wants to drive professionally for hire and reward must hold a Driver Qualification Card to prove that they have undertaken this training.
You must complete 35 hours or 5 days worth of approved training every 5 years to complete your Driver CPC training and obtain your Driver Qualification Card. These days can be booked with us individually or in blocks of 2 days, 3 days, 4 days or a whole week.
Group bookings for up to 25 people can be delivered at your venue as required, including weekends and overnight to suit your company's shift patterns.
We have several instructors who are qualified to deliver these courses - Randall Hughes, Lance Greenhalgh, Rik Noakes, Stuart Andrews. Our new starters David and Ian will also be delivering this course out eventually.
Currently, we have 31 different modules to choose from including;
Our course structure for next year is as follows.
The mental Health Awareness module is a brand new module for next year which has recently been approved. All of our presentations are regularly updated to keep in line with the most recent legislation changes.
For more information on the Driver CPC course that we offer you can go to our Driver CPC page on the website.
