How Do You Become a Bus Driver?

Were you one of those children who always wanted to be a bus driver? Do you love the idea of meeting lots of different kinds of people, transporting them all over the country, with no two days ever the same? Or maybe you just fancy a career change and think a bus driver is an interesting option. Whatever your drive (pun intended), we’re glad you’ve decided to pursue a career as a bus driver! But what do you do now? How do you go about becoming a bus driver anyway and what do you need to do?

Licence Requirements

Before you do anything else, you need to get yourself a Driver CPC. This is the first stop to absolutely any HGV driver training. It’s called the Certificate of Professional Competence and basally proves that you are safe to drive on the roads, medically healthy and understand how to drive. Getting your Driver CPC involved theory and practical driving tests, a big dose of basic training, time behind the wheel and a medical exam to boot. You can find out more about the Driver CPC in our blog here. The Driver CPC will give you a basic understanding of how to drive large vehicles, the safety requirements to driving them and get you up to speed on the physical act of driving and performing safety checks.

Once you’ve got your Driver CPC under your belt, you’ve done most of the heavy lifting – now you need to top up with your specific licence. For a bus, that’s a Cat D, but there is one more step first.  The next step is actually to take your Cat B license. This is a pre-requisite of the Cat D licence and allows you to professionally drive a vehicle of up to 3,500kg Maximum Authorised Mass, with up to 8 passenger seats. In other words – cars. Once you’ve done that, you can go for the final qualification – the Cat D licence. This licence is what allows you to drive any vehicle with more than 8 passenger seats (buses, minibuses and so on), as well as any tracked vehicles (because who hasn’t wanted to drive a tank?). With those 3 licenses, you can now go and get a job as a bus driver.

What’s Involved in Cat D Training?

Cat D and D1 training are programmes specifically designed to teach you how to drive buses and minibuses in a professional capacity. Once you’ve achieved your Driver CPC qualification, you will need to take a Cat D training course as well.

During your Cat D training you will learn:

• The rules and regulations of the road, particularly relating to HGV’s
• The maintenance and general fixtures of HGV’s and busses
• Customer service skills
• Everything about the safety of yourself, the passengers and other people sharing the road with you
• Risk management and future sightedness
• Driving skills, with theory and practical skills and training for large, multi-seated vehicles

At the end of the training, you will be legally able to drive any passenger vehicle with more than 8 seats, and you’re ready to become a bus driver.

How Do I Start?

Your first step is to come and speak to someone like us! As a specialist HGV training service, we provide the full range of HGV training services for aspiring drivers. Whether you want to drive a horsebox or a double-decker bus, we have a programme to help you learn, get you qualified and even find you your first job.

If you would like to know more about the HGV training services we offer, just get in touch with the team today.