How You Can Lose Your HGV Licence

Hello everyone thank you for all comments and questions you all had on the last blog, hopefully everyone benefited from all the information and also the answers on lot of the question people had. This week I am looking  at How you can lose your HGV licence.

The HGV licence is another string to people bows and a way of making a living driving HGV’s on the open roads. Losing your HGV licence is probably a thought you don’t even want to think about or even consider ever happening, and will put the driver out of work temporarily depending on the situation. But afraid it can happen and it’s down to the driver to make sure it doesn’t happen and to do everything they can to protect their licences.

Let me explain the main ways to go about losing your HGV licence and these points are what you need to not do. First of all exceeding work hours rules or manipulating the tachograph of the vehicle you are driving in, this would also cause your employer to lose their operator’s licence or have it severely restricted. Let me prove this by a situation that happened in Scotland a while ago.

A Scottish traffic commissioner has disqualified a HGV driver for a total of 15months, the reason is because the drivers wilful violations of the law, commissioner Joan Atken found, during a number of hearings, that the HGV driver had been violating work hours and tachograph use on 39 different occasions. Joan Atken was forced to deem the driver unfit to drive professionally, questioning his competence and level of commitment of safe driving, but this wasn’t the end of it from the traffic commissioner.

Joan Atken also went after other employees. Uddingston-based firm was found that they apparently pushed drivers in to working longer hours and breaking there working hour’s rules and regulations, in an attempt to compensate for recent expansion. This is not a problem and shouldn’t be for eight weeks, but the company’s operator’s licence has been restricted in the total number of HGV’s the company can operate out of the business, which give them time to find ways to deal with expansion. 

Don’t be a law breaker

We haven’t identified the driver or the former employer because it is not out place to name and shame. But the reason and point being put across in this blog is to remind readers, breaking the law does have consequences which are just not worth it in the long run at all. The HGV industry is strictly regulated to maximise safety for everyone. As commissioner Atken clearly states, the work hour’s rules are there to combat fatigue among professional HGV drivers. Fatigue dangers not only the driver but also all other road users, Falling asleep while driving an HGV is the usual common cause of very serious accidents that end up in serious injury or even death.

If you are a professional HGV driver, you should certainly know all the rules and regulations of the job you do especially about the work hours as it is a main factor of the job role. If you a planning to become a professional HGV driver in the future, you will learn all about your work time regulations and much more during the HGV training course sessions and also the employment skill courses that we provide at HGV Driver Training Centre. But do yourself a favour and the company you work for by always following the law.