What the driver test doesn't teach you

Ask any experienced truck driver what their licence actually prepared them for and you'll get the same answer: not much. The test is a box-ticking exercise. The real curriculum gets delivered on the job, sometimes the hard way.

"When you go for your licence, you were just taught to go forward, back, and change gears. That's basically all," says Dennis Atkinson, who runs multi-combinations throughout Victoria.

Paul, who drives fridge vans all over Australia, is more direct: "The licensing system has got a lot to answer for."

The mismatch between training conditions and real-world driving is the complaint that comes up first, every time.

Container driver Tony Shepard went for his licence in an S-line with 15 speeds and a deep reduction button on the gear stick. The examining officer had no idea what it was.

"I thought, okay, and you're teaching me?" he explained.

Tim, who runs B-double fuel tankers up the east coast, argues the shift to automatics in training trucks is masking a deeper problem.

"People are coming from driving a courier van to a 600 horsepower automatic truck and driving them the same way," he told me.

"Unless you know what gear it sounds like you're in when it's labouring, you don't really understand how to drive a truck."

A synchro box, he reckons, would at least give new drivers a feel for what's happening beneath them.

Dennis said he wants load restraint added to the curriculum as a minimum.

"You should be made to do a course on load restraints, where the load's got to be situated on the trailer weight-wise according to axle groups. You're not shown none of that until you're on the job," was how he put it.

Shaun Orchard, who drives B-double stock crates and tippers, remembers his test clearly.

"There was no load on it, there was no nothing. Just went for the test, passed, and off you went."

Beyond the basics, there's a whole vocabulary of practical knowledge that no examiner ever assesses.

Important things like reading traffic, anticipating lane changes, reading vehicle positioning, judging a driver's intention before they act...

"My ex-wife used to come with me and ask, 'How did you know what that car was going to do?'" explained Tony Shepard. "Because you just see them looking around in the cabin and you think, okay, you're about to make a move."

Overtaking on a two-lane highway is another skill entirely absent from any test. Tony flags the classic mistake.

"Don't sit up behind him if you're going to overtake," he explains. "Wind it up and be almost on the go by the time that car goes past. I've seen it where someone's sitting right on a car, it touches the brake, they panic, and it's all gone."

For tipper drivers like Dennis and Shaun, load behaviour is critical knowledge that the test never touches. Lessons like wind direction when tipping can flip the body; lime sticks to the walls and won't come down, and tailgate chains are non-negotiable.

"Make sure your chains are off, otherwise you tip it up and she's not coming out, and all of a sudden it can come over the top of the tailgate and you're in all sorts," Dennis explains.

Laurence Forster runs road trains in Western Australia, and provides some of the most specific practical advice you'll ever hear:

Tim adds that the unwritten rules of the road (backing off so someone can safely overtake, flashing them back in, basic UHF etiquette), are nowhere to be seen in any curriculum.

"It's just basic stuff. I don't think it's taught anywhere," he says.

And on unhitching trailers: "We all teach ourselves our own system. That probably comes from experience from dropping one."

Dale Clay, who runs grain road trains across south-eastern Australia, puts it simply: braking techniques and basic troubleshooting should be in every lesson plan. Currently, neither is.

The deeper problem isn't just what the test misses. It's that the informal apprenticeship which once filled those gaps no longer exists.

Drivers used to learn by growing up around trucks: spending Saturdays in the yard; riding in the passenger seat watching an older driver work the mirrors into a tight dock, and winding trailer legs as a kid while dad connected the airlines.

"OH&S and the do-gooders have ruined the culture in driving," says Paul, who was hooking and unhooking trailers at 13 and had a Queensland Police officer disbelieve his age when he sat his licence test at 17.

"Instead of young people gradually picking up those skill sets, and gradually is the important word, they've lost it all."

The result, he argues, is a fundamental split in the workforce.

"There are far more drivers than there are truck operators," he explains. "A driver hops in, puts it in drive, and goes. An operator knows the vehicle, can change a tyre, understands the running gear. Australia needs to go back to creating operators."

Shaun Orchard credits his own start to time spent as a teenager at the K&S Freighters yard; driving around the yard on weekends, absorbing the culture, and learning from the older blokes around him.

"From a driving instructor's point of view, what they taught me was probably stuff all," he says. "We just worked it out."

That kind of immersion, Shaun reckons, simply isn't available to young people coming into the industry today.

Tim watches the same pattern with quiet resignation.

"The guys running compliance are postgrad university students. Nothing wrong with that, but they've got no real-life experience," he says.

"All the old boys who came up through the ranks are retiring or being pushed out. We're over-governed. We are humans, not robots."

The irony is that none of what these drivers describe is particularly difficult to teach: load restraint, braking distances, trailer hook-up procedure, reading traffic, the etiquette of the road...

The licensing system doesn't need to be reinvented; it just needs to reflect the job it's supposedly preparing people for. Until it does, the real test will keep happening out on the road, and not everyone will pass it.

What are the benefits of driver training?

Essential tools every truck driver should carry on the road

Understanding GVM, GCM and payload