The Decline of 7.5 tonne Drivers Unveiling the Troubled Evolution of 7.5 tonne Driving
Late last month the latest driving licence statistics were published. Long gone are the days when pretty much anyone could jump into a ‘seven-and-a-half-tonner’ – now it’s mainly older people.
Since 1 January 1997 you have needed to take a separate test. People who got their car licences before then have what’s called ‘grandfather rights’ – they are allowed to drive vehicles up to 7.5T GVW without taking a separate test. This means that you must have been born in 1979 or earlier to have that right, although that right disappears at age 70 unless you start paying for medicals (more likely to affect motorhome owners than drivers of medium size trucks). And drivers who have C or CE passes have C1 added to their licences automatically.
So, there are still over 15.6 million people with C1—that sounds huge, but not everyone with a car licence wants to drive a truck and carry out deliveries, particularly as they get older—think about your Mum and grandad.
https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/d0be1ed2-9907-4ec4-b552-c048f6aec16a/gb-driving-licence-data
What is the graph showing? It starts at March 2015 – that’s the first date when data about different licence types is available. The reason for the irregular months along the x-axis, is that the Department for Transport doesn’t have a regular reporting pattern for these stats. And the reason for the gap is that DfT mis-reported this data for that period. The orange trace (which uses the left-hand axis) shows the proportion of car drivers who have C1 as a category on their licence and the blue trace (using the right-hand axis) shows the average age of a C1 licence holder.
These drivers are getting older and are often carrying out very physical jobs – we’re talking two-person deliveries of white goods and furniture. Whereas 50% of C licence holders are currently below age 45 (and even 45% of CE licence holders), only 4% of C1 licence holders are below that age. And 84% of those C1s below 45 are category C holders anyway!
So, why would you take a C1 test these days? Well, probably only if your employer is paying for it, for example, for ambulance drivers. Otherwise, if paying yourself, you’d probably have gone for a C test until recently, and now you’d probably go straight to CE - from 15 November 2021 you’ve been able to go straight to a CE test, in a large articulated lorry without having to pass one in a large rigid lorry first. We know that immediately pre-Covid there were over 10 times as many C and CE tests taken as those for C1, and it used to be higher.
A company still using C1 drivers will have to take its head out of the sand and accept that the operation needs to change. It can change in one of two ways: either moving to much smaller vehicles (bear in mind that this issue doesn’t just affect 7.5T; it affects anything over 3.5T GVW) or reviewing the driver pool that is being recruited from to include C/CE drivers (with implications for pay) …
There are big implications for pay, as there’s a need to make these types of jobs attractive compared to artic jobs, often with a raised dock to back up to. If you had a CE licence, which sort of job would you choose? With peak ahead of us, if you think you need extra 7.5T drivers, now’s the time to put your thinking cap on.
