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My names John Mitchell, I’m a Driver Trainer
and I work for the Stobart group and I’m based at Carlisle.
We’re run about 2,500 units and about 3,500 trailers
so it’s certainly one of the largest haulage companies in the country.
The days of a driver coming to get a job and be given the keys to his truck
and told to take the truck for a delivery are now gone.
A great majority of our drivers now have an NVQs which does involve a numeracy and literacy test.
If they are not up to a standard then we are more then happy to send them to courses
to get them up to a standard.
We feel the advantage is we get a better driver,
we get a more qualified driver and a much more professional driver.
The benefits to the company of training and indeed the apprenticeships, is that we get,
certainly we’d hope that we’ll get a more loyal work force.
I think if we’re investing money in people, then they can see we’re investing money in them
and hopefully they’ll understand that this is a good company to work for,
simply because of that investment.
It is important to bring young people into the company, train them up properly,
give them a proper apprenticeship
and then that is going to be good for the company
because we’ve had hands on with them right from the start.
Adam came to us as a 17 year old straight from school, he passed all the processes,
the interviews to put him on the apprenticeship scheme.
First of all, we wanted Adam to get involved with all aspects of the industry,
we didn’t particularly want him to focus too much on one part of the industry.
System Training provide the theory side of the training.
Adam would go out to System once a week to get the theory training,
then he‘d come back to do the on-the-job training as most apprentices do.
The haulage industry in particularly has got to start investing in training,
particularly apprenticeships.
I think apprenticeships are an absolutely essential thing for the economy.
I think a lot of companies in the past have not been as involved in apprenticeships
over the last few years as they should have been.
We are now maybe finding the results of that is that we’re finding it difficult
to find properly trained people who have come through an apprenticeship.
We are absolutely thrilled with the way Adam has come on.
Ourselves and System, we take the credit for that, I’m prepared to take some of the credit because
I mentored Adam right through
and it gives me a great deal of pride to see actually where he’s got today.