Train And Test At Ritchies
THE LAST piece of Ritchies’ road haulage training jigsaw was put in place in December with the creation of an LGV / PCV driving test area within the huge complex at Hobden Street, Glasgow.
Now driver training candidates can complete their course on site with their official test on the £70,000 designated tarmac area.
Examiners visit Ritchies every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, testing drivers on rigids, artics and buses.
Walter Ritchie, who moved from road haulage to driver training in 1983, has continuously developed roads related instruction courses to now cover ADR, CPC (drivers), CPC (transport managers), health and safety, plus forklift and lorry loader training, even scaling the heights of tower crane operating certification.
Known for keeping the cost of training down to affordable levels, Ritchies arrange to run individual LGV medicals in group bookings, charged at £50 per driver.
Ritchies are also up to speed with the recent merging of national and international syllabuses for the CPC in transport management.
Looking to the future, the great debate on whether LGV driver training should be carried out on loaded vehicles will roll on for another two or three years, reckons Walter Ritchie who questions the increased wear and tear element on his training vehicles and the necessity to have the unit weighed at regular intervals.
Article taken from Transport News Scotland (March 12)