Volvo Trucks Debuts European Driver Training Programme

As new EU regulations say that all drivers must undergo 35 hours of training within a five-year period, Swedish manufacture Volvo has put together a new comprehensive training programme which meets the EU requirements. Participants are joining the courses to further develop their skills and qualify to teach professional drivers themselves.

The training programme consists of five courses that last a whole day: efficient driving, safe driving, health and first aid, load securing and transport security and the haulage sector and legislation.

The first course, efficient driving, can focus on long distance haulage, construction site operations or driving in urban traffic. Moving to the safe driving, participants run through the most common causes of accidents and are trained on how to prevent them.

Furthermore, the drivers learn how to adjust their nutrition and sleep, as well as what they should do if they arrive at the site of an accident.

Technical wise, participants are then taught the regulations and principles of load securing as well as transport security tips. Finally, they earn how the haulage sector is structured as well as its financial aspects.

"In Sweden the driver is always solely responsible and can be fined for poor load securing. But the worst thing is sloppiness that is not detected, because that can lead to injury and death," said An Paepen, Manager of Volvo Trucks Driver Development programme.

"We started rolling out this training package as early as 2009 and will be up and running throughout Europe in 2014, to meet demand from our customers. In the past two years we have trained over 15,000 drivers in 25 European countries and the number continues to increase. The courses are constantly being improved to satisfy the needs of our customers and our drivers," added An Paepen.