100’s of HGV drivers from all over the UK, descended in their vehicles to London - where they have staged a protest against rising fuel prices. With diesel prices now hitting £1.30 a litre, some haulage firms believe they will go bust very quickly. It now costs over £1,000 in diesel costs to run a HGV for a week, a figure which the haulage world are not happy with.

Protesters have demanded a 25p rebate for essential commercial use, which will bring the UK in line with other European countries. Some members of Welsh HGV firms have threatened to block ports and refineries if the government doesn’t budge.

Petrol and diesel prices are currently 70% tax - so it makes sense for the government to reduce duty when oil prices rise. Other EU countries have helped their citizens quickly and efficiently. The French immediately cut the duty on fuel when oil prices started to rise earlier this year. That example of a forward thinking and helpful government is a far cry from Brown and Darling’s incompetence and greed.

Commentators are predicting a repeat of 2001’s fuel protest, which brought the country to a standstill and like the 10p tax before, the government is widely expected to complete a u-turn on this policy. Hopefully HGV firms, drivers and the millions whose jobs depend on the haulage industry, will be given a helping hand by our so called ‘Labour’ government.

 Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - First in the UK for HGV News & Information

Finland became the latest European nation to decide against road pricing plans for HGVs. Britain is still thinking about introducing a ‘pay as you go’ scheme for HGVs across the UK. These plans have been rubbished by the FTA and RHA as ‘unworkable’. The pay as you drive option (to replace road tax) would mean the HGV drivers, owners and operators end up paying a fortune in tax - as they travel the highest mileage of any vehicles on the road.

Finland’s transport and communications ministry said in a statement Thursday it had stopped planning a trial of a heavy goods vehicle road pricing scheme for want of a workable technical solution. The government had intended to test an HGV road pricing system in southeastern Finland, which has long experienced congestion in the form of lorries heading for Russia. The ministry said in the statement that the introduction of road pricing would have reduced the area’s competitiveness.  However, the working group that dismissed the road pricing trial also proposed charging vehicles entering a new lorry park to be built in the southeast. The government hopes the 24-million-euro lorry park will ease congestion on roads leading to border crossings.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV News & Information

Over the weekend Londoners removed ‘Red’ Ken from office and voted in Blue Boris to be London’s Mayor. But what does this change mean for London’s HGV industry?

• Boris has stated he will halt the planned £25 a day congestion charge. This will be a welcome relief for small businesses and families in the capital. Advantage HGV spoke to Brian Gomez, a self employed heating engineer. ‘The threat of a £25 a day Congestion Charge would have bankrupted me,’ said Gomez, ‘I can’t afford to buy a new van, yet the old one would have cost me over £6,000 a year to visit customers in London, I’m over the moon Ken’s gone.’
• Mayor Johnson has also said he will review the Western extension of the Congestion Charge - if this removed it will again provide blessed relief for the HGV and haulage industry working in and delivering to the capital
• The LEZ also looks set to be reviewed - with a hope that the current draconian punishments for HGV firms who can’t afford the costly uprgrades, be scrapped

On a wider national level, the election results look set to benefit HGV drivers, firms and individual motorists across the UK. Gordon Brown’s Labour government took such a beating last Thursday - that the Prime Minister will be forced to re-evaluate some of his controversial tax rises. Hopefully we can expect to see:

• A cancellation of the proposed 2% fuel duty rise in October
• A review of the controversial road tax rises based on engine size
• Re-introduction of the 10p tax rates

If the above happens, then we can be thankful for Boris and what he has achieved. HGV training costs will be kept lower if fuel price rises are scrapped and HGV operators will find it easier and more profitable to operate in London.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV / LGV News & Information

Transport for London claims 400 operators have already registered to join its HGV / LGV Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS). Officially launched at the CV Show last week, the scheme is free and open to all van and lorry operators driving in and around London who meet the FORS standards. Glen Davies, HGV / LGV development manager at Transport for London, tells MT:

“Companies were able to register online before the scheme was rolled out. Our target is to have 500 members on board in the first year.”Registering online is just the first step in the membership process after completing a self-assessment, a member of the Metropolitan Police Service Commercial Vehicle Education Unit will visit the operator’s premises to carry out a formal assessment. If the operator meets the criteria, they will then be awarded either a gold, silver or bronze membership to FORS. To date, 12 police officers make up the FORS assessment arm, but if necessary, “more resources will be added,” claims Davies. Stephen Steele, head of TfL’s HGV / LGV unit, adds:

“We hope the scheme will encourage HGV / LGV operators to focus on how they can adopt better working practices to make them stand out from their competitors and make their businesses more efficient, while actively contributing to the wider agenda of reducing their impact on climate change and improving sustainability.” For more information about FORS, which is part of the wider London HGV / LGV Plan, published in January 2008

Advantage HGV Training and Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV / LGV News and Information

Norwich has abandoned plans to introduce a congestion charge after a study revealed that it wouldn’t raise enough money to fund other transport schemes. However, the £500,000 report has strengthened the case for a Norwich Northern Distributor Road (NDR), which would cut city-centre travel time by 16%.

The county and city councils used money from the government’s transport innovation fund to investigate the potential of a congestion charge in the East Anglian city. A feasibility study found that charging vehicles to go inside Norwich’s inner ring road would only produce a “modest” surplus, insufficient for significant investment in other transport projects.

A recommendation from the local authorities will be made in May for no further work to be carried out. It states: “We do not feel we could put together a sufficiently attractive package capable of securing sufficient public support for successful implementation. It is unlikely that we could prepare a satisfactory bid to government for substantive funding.”

Adrian Gunson, cabinet member for planning and transportation, says: “The council always envisaged that an acceptable road-pricing scheme would have to provide funds for significantly improved public transport and to accelerate projects such as the Northern Distributor Road. Pricing people off the city-centre streets without offering attractive alternatives is not what we are trying to achieve.”

Gunson adds: “On its own, the NDR would cut city centre travel time by 16% and distance travelled by 13%, as well as being the only proposal that would taking rat-running traffic out of Thorpe St Andrew, Sprowston, Catton, Hellesdon and other residential areas.”

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV / LGV News & Information

• £24m for VOSA to check HGVs
• Foreign HGVs more likely to be unsafe
• 24-hour checks on some motorways

The Government is cracking down on HGVs that put other road users at risk.

An extra £24m is being given to the Vehicle Operator Services Agency (VOSA) to fund a 50% increase in the number of checks carried out, helping to ensure that these HGVs are more effectively apprehended.

Enforcement figures show that HGVs from abroad are more likely to be overloaded, unroadworthy or driven in excess of drivers’ hours rules than their UK counterparts.

With the money, VOSA will also be able to open two more enforcement sites in locations where there is a high volume of high-risk HGV traffic.

It will also allow inspectors to carry out checks 24 hours a day, every day of the week, at two sites, one on the M6 and one in North Wales. Similar ‘24/7′ checks will happen at other sites over a three-year period.

In addition, VOSA will be able to employ 97 more enforcement staff and almost double the number of prohibitions they issue, where a driver or vehicle is prevented from continuing their journey until the fault has been rectified.

VOSA already uses technology to tackle unroadworthy foreign HGVs, including weigh-in-motion sensors to spot overweight vehicles and automatic numberplate recognition technology to spot operators with a poor compliance record.

• Last year, the Department for Transport handed out ‘Fresnel’ lenses to foreign drivers, which cut the incidents of side-swiping (overtaking accidents caused by foreign drivers’ poor visibility) by 59%.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV News and Information

The DSA (Driver Standards Agency) have released news that the HGV Theory Test is set to become much harder from July 2008.

The current HGV Theory Test consists of 65 questions - of which the trainee driver must correctly answer 60 correctly to pass. From July this year, the HGV Theory Test wil increase to a 100 question exam - with students needing to answer a minimun of 80 questions correctly in order to pass.

Any student booking an HGV course booked before July, will be the last to take the exam at the 65 question level.  So, if you want a slightly easier route to becoming an HGV driver - book now or start revising!

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV Training and Information

From September 2009, the way you train to become an HGV driver will change. Instead of the simple, cost-effective 5 day courses - all trainee HGV drivers will have to complete a Driver’s CPC (Certificate of Professional Competence). This will involve an extra written examination and a longer DSA practical test. The details of exactly what to expect are sketchy - but everyone agrees that the main change will be in price.

James Clifford - Director of Training at the UK’s largest HGV training school, AdvantageHGV, said:

‘We don’t know what the full cost implications of the new legislation will be other than an increase in the time and expense required to train as an HGV driver.’

He went on to say: ‘We’re expecting the next 18mths to be extremely busy as the leading HGV training companies gear to train drivers before the new rules kick in’.

The advise from the experts is to train now or risk paying more next year. Advantage HGV have laid on even more trucks - and now train in over 45 centres across the UK - ahead of the expected increase in trainees.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV Training and Information

Angela Eagle, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, took the unusual step of visiting South Wales haulage firm Owens Road Services last week to find out first-hand how fuel tax rises affect the industry. Eagle’s visit on 27 March was organised by Owens, the FTA and local MPs Nia Griffith and Dr Hywel Francis. The Llanelli haulage firm presented figures to Eagle which show the postponed fuel duty rise - originally planned to take place this week - would have cost Owens an additional £250,000 Ian Gallagher, policy manager for Wales at the FTA, thinks the meeting was valuable.

“The minister was confronted with [an FTA] member face-to-face, rather than through an association,” he says. “And she realised, I hope, that the pressure we are putting on the Treasury is not the concern only of a lobbying group, but has some very real foundations. Owens was able to reiterate the concerns from a grass-roots level.”

Gallagher hopes to bring a number of operators to face-to-face meetings with senior MPs, including the secretary of state for Wales, Paul Murphy, or senior civil servants, as the FTA begins its fight against the proposed 2p/litre fuel duty rise scheduled for October. No-one from the Treasury was available to comment as MT went to press.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs - 1st in the UK for HGV News and Information

Another of Ken Livingstone’s absurd plans - the LEZ (Low Emission Zone) has turned into a nightmare. Plans to charge HGVs up to £200 a day to enter the city to deliver much-needed goods are up in the air. Some firms are facing £1,000 a week in charges just to do business.

Remeber to Vote out Ken on May 1st - and London can have a chance of returning to normal.

Transport for London (TfL) has insisted operators do not need to keep paying £200 a day to enter the capital once Vosa has approved their abatement equipment, even though it can take up to 10 days for the data to be uploaded at TfL. The organisation has moved to clarify the situation after one operator was informed by TfL’s helpdesk that he would have to keep paying until his smoke test resultsappeared on its database.

Steve Coombes, who operates one truck as Coombes Transport, says he ordered his abatement equipment six months ago, but once he had it fitted last month, he then had to wait a fortnight to get a test with Vosa. Once his truck had passed Vosa’s test, Coombes contacted TfL to find out what to do while he waited for the pass to be logged.

“I was appalled to be told that I would have to pay the £200, or a £1,000 fine if I didn’t, until TfL has a record that my truck is compliant on its database and this could take 10 days. I was also told to check the system to see when my vehicle details were uploaded.” Coombes says he will not pay anything more to TfL because his truck is compliant and he does not have the cash flow to spare.

A TfL spokeswoman said: “If an operator’s vehicle has successfully passed a Vosa smoke test, they can travel within the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) without paying the daily charge. “TfL recommends that if operators are unsure whether or not their details have been updated on TfL’s database, they should log on to the vehicle compliance checker (www.tfl.gov.uk/lezlondon) or call 0845 607 0009.

“In the unlikely event that an operator receives a penalty charge notice under these circumstances, they can make a representation against it through the formal representations process detailed on the penalty.”

This ‘unlikely’ event is happening on a daily basis. With ‘Transport’ for London earning over £500,000 a week in revenue since the scam began.

Advantage HGV Training & Jobs – 1^st in the UK for HGV News and Information