Women HGV Drivers

Thank you all for reading through the blog last week, I hope you all enjoyed reading it. I apprecitate all of the feedback and further questions. Over the last few weeks I have had a reacurring question regarding women driving in the HGV industry.

There are now more and more Women HGV Drivers coming into this industry every day and choosing driving as a career. At HGV Driver Training Centre we have noticed a huge influx of women entering and wanting to train in Cat C and C+E Licences.

Back in 2013 there was an article published by the Guardian. They focused the article on a 21-Year-old Katie Gillard who is a full qualifed HGV driver working in a quarry in Wiltshire. She passed her HGV licnece in 2010 when she was 18.

The article that the Guardian published mentioned that the Driving haulage industry is mostly ruled by men. In 2013 there were 300,000 licenced HGV drivers in the UK and only 0.5% are women. Although this was the case 2 years ago this number is rapidly increasing with the amount of opportunities out there in the industry at the moment with 60,000 job vacancies UK wide.

There is no reason why women should not be HGV Drivers. The industry with is rugged nature is usually dominated by men. Even though the conditions for driving are not ideal for everyone, driving is something that can be mastered by women.

I still feel that the industry have a long way to go in taking females seriously. Even though they are fully qualified and have completed the same training as their male counterpart, women are frequently treated like they don’t know what they are doing.

For example, Katie whose story was in the Guardian, told them about a time she was on a construction site and the male supervisor tried to tell her how to drive the vehicle. Luckily, she just overlooked him and stayed true to her knowledge.

It would be great to see more role models out there like Katie who are pursing there dream as a HGV Driver.

In conclusion training is open to anyone who wants to obtain a licence. As long as they are over the age of 18 and hold a full UK licence it doesn’t matter whether you are male or female.