Hiring a Class 1 or Class 2 driver

The four things a driver has to hold, and what each one is

The licence category. Class 1 is category C+E, an artic or a drawbar. Class 2 is category C, a rigid. They are not interchangeable and a Class 2 driver cannot take a Class 1 job. Advertising for a Class 1 when the work is rigid wastes everybody's week.

The Driver CPC, evidenced by a Driver Qualification Card. A driver has to complete 35 hours of periodic training every five years with a JAUPT approved provider to keep it. It can be done in blocks of seven hours or spread across the five years. The card carries the expiry date and the driver can check their own hours on GOV.UK.

The digital tachograph card. A separate card with its own separate expiry, which is why people lose one while holding the other. Running without it, or with an expired one, is a driver and an operator problem at the roadside.

Any ADR certificate, and only if the load needs it. Asking for ADR on general haulage narrows your field for nothing.

The three checks that are the employer's, not the agency's

Right to work. Doing it properly before the first shift is what gives you a statutory excuse against a civil penalty under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. Doing it late, or taking a photocopy without seeing the original or using the online service, gives you nothing. The excuse is not retrospective: it protects you only if the check happened before they started.

The licence itself, through the DVLA. The driver generates a check code at gov.uk/view-driving-licence. It is free, it is valid for 21 days, and it can be used once, so a driver applying to four firms needs four codes. That code shows you the categories and the endorsements. A photograph of the plastic card shows you neither, because the endorsements have not been printed on the licence since the counterpart was abolished.

The CPC and tachograph expiry dates. Both of them, in writing, diarised. Nobody is ever grateful for this until the week somebody cannot go out.

The question that decides whether your advert works

It is not the pay. It is handball.

A driver reads an advert looking for whether there is any, and an advert that does not say is read as though there is. To a great many drivers no handball is worth more than an extra fifty pence an hour, and they will take the advert that says so over the one that pays more and stays quiet.

After that, in order: am I home every night, what time does the shift start and is the window planned, what is the pattern, and what am I pulling. Five sentences. Most driving adverts contain none of them and then the employer concludes there are no drivers.

New passes, and the thing that is actually blocking them

There are more newly qualified Class 1 drivers than there are firms willing to take one, and the reason given is usually experience. The reason underneath is usually insurance: many fleet policies carry a minimum age or a minimum period held before they will cover a driver on their own.

That is an insurer's underwriting position and NOT a legal requirement, and it is worth ringing your broker about before writing two years' experience into an advert. Some policies will cover a new pass on a named basis, or after an assessment, or on specific vehicles.

If the answer comes back no, say so in the advert instead of asking for experience you do not actually need. "Our insurer requires two years held" is a reason a new pass can respect. "Experience essential" reads as a door with nothing behind it.

The hours rules you are agreeing to manage

Drivers' hours under the EU rules, retained in UK law, and the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, which are separate and are the ones people forget. They cap average weekly working time and they limit night work.

A target or a schedule that can only be met by breaking either is a problem that belongs to whoever set the schedule. That is worth knowing before you set one.

We have written the driver's side of this up at drivers' working time and the tachograph. An employer is welcome to read both, and it is usually cheaper than finding out at a roadside check.

What we will not pretend

We cannot tell you how long it takes to fill a Class 1 vacancy. Anybody quoting you an average is quoting somebody else's market or a number they made up, and the honest answer is that it depends on your pay, your pattern, your site and your gates.

What we can tell you is what the adverts on this board are paying, because we count them ourselves: see what the work pays. When there are too few adverts in a category to mean anything, that page refuses to show a figure rather than showing a thin one.

Ready to write the advert

Our software reads it before it publishes and tells you which of the questions above it has not answered. That is advice, never a refusal: the advert goes live either way and the money is yours to spend. Post a job, or read what it costs first.

The other guide is Hiring warehouse and forklift staff.