I have had a vague idea floating around in my head for a long time. I often sat at my desk bored out of my tiny mind dealing with insurance matters and dreaming I was driving across the Australian desert or American Midwest at the helm of an enormous truck with Hank Williams playing on the stereo.
Well why not? So I signed up for a one week course of tuition with the LGV test at the end of it. There is supposed to be a shortage of truckers at the moment so it seemed a good enough idea.
So just before christmas 2006, I and another scottish lad called Brian climbed into the cab of this beast for the first time.
The test should have been on 22nd December but the school cocked up the bookings. I agreed to take a later test date in return for some extra tuition. It dragged the process out a bit but the extra lesson were invaluable.
I am surprised at how little preparation other people seem to put into such an expensive process. The instructors seemed amazed at the effort I had put in. I suppose I have the time at the moment but when you are paying close to a grand and knowing that the pass rate is about 40% it seems sensible to leave as little as possible to chance.
The test was yesterday and was the fourth driving test in my life: Car in South Africa (1982), Car in London (1992), bike in London (1997) and now this; LGV Class C. And it was about the most unpleasant of all. The instructor was a bastard. He was sarcastic and impatient with a tendency to audibly sigh at each mistake I made. When we returned to base with some manouvres such as the hill start having not been done I assumed I was one of the 60%. But I scraped through. Years of biking have made me road and mirror aware and I was technically competent with gears and such. I think this made up for the fact that I brick every time another truck comes at me. Have you ever seen two trains approach each other at speed and contracted slightly even though you know they are on rails. Well that’s what it is like with a truck. You are bouncing along a narrow road at 40mph, all 18 tonnes of you, with a 40 ton artic coming at you and you each fill up your resepective lanes. There is a “whump” as your slipstreams meet then you look in the mirror and there was about three feet between you all along….
Anyway I think I went into shock afterwards. I have thought about little else for three weeks but its all over now but I need a couple of days in a dim room with a flannel over my eyes to recover.
