The Best Nationwide Low Cost Intensive Trailer Training Courses

Trailer Training

Do you own a caravan, horsebox trailer, or cargo trailer? If so, do you possess a Category B+E licence? We ask because the majority of trailer owners in the UK are required to have the additional entitlement to tow legally. If you need the entitlement and do not have it, you could face severe penalties for being caught towing a trailer on public roads. The good news is that the HGV Training Centre offers comprehensive trailer training that will enable you to obtain the right licence.

Before we get into explaining our training programme, let us first discuss licences. Any driver who obtained a car licence prior to 1 January 1997 is eligible to tow trailers and caravans up to a certain weight limit without needing an additional entitlement. Essentially this includes any vehicles that fall within the range of the current B+E and C1+E categories. A driver who obtained his or her car licence after that date will need the B+E licence at a minimum. A Cat C1+E licence may be required for some drivers wishing to tow heavier trailers.

One last thing to consider about licencing is your purpose for driving. You will likely be fine with a Category B+E licence if you tow trailers for personal recreational use. If you are driving for hire, you will need an upgraded licence designed for commercial drivers. Please see the guides elsewhere on our website that address Category C licences for professionals.

Why Trailer Training Is Important

Current regulations do not mandate that trailer owners go through formal training before taking the trailer test. Therefore, it is not uncommon for people to ask why trailer training is important. The answer to that question is actually three-fold.

First, it is almost impossible to fully understand everything that will be required of you at the trailer test simply by reading a few books or checking some websites. Trailer training is specially designed to cover everything you will encounter at test time. This enables you to go into the trailer test with all the confidence you need to pass. When you train with the HGV Training Centre, there will never be a question of whether or not you are prepared to take the test.

Second, towing a trailer is not as easy as it may appear. Whenever you add a trailer to a tow vehicle, you are increasing both size and weight, both of which make driving more difficult even under ideal conditions. It is impossible to learn how to deal with the extra size and weight simply from reading a book. You need to actually get behind the wheel of a vehicle with a trailer in tow to experience it first-hand. Formal training gives you that that experience; it gives you the opportunity to practice.

Third, towing trailers safely requires at least a basic understanding of the physics involved. Physics is something you can learn from a book, but your understanding of that knowledge is enhanced through practical experience. Practicing with a real tow vehicle and trailer will give you a greater appreciation for:

proper braking techniques
accelerating with a heavy load
accomplishing cornering effectively
reversing a trailer into a parking space.

All of these exercises are directly related to physics. Our training programme makes you intimately familiar with those physics through both book learning and practice. Mastering the physics will put you in a very strong position to pass your trailer test the first time you take it.

We want to give you one example of the physics we are talking about before we move on. So, consider reversing your trailer into a parking space. The physics of doing so rests on your understanding of the fulcrum, or pivot point, of your vehicle and trailer combination. That pivot point is the trailer hitch. Whatever direction the hitch moves in determines how the trailer moves.

To begin a reversing manoeuvre, you must first turn the wheel of your tow vehicle in the direction opposite of where you want to trailer to go. This seems counter-intuitive, but it is absolutely necessary. If you want to trailer to move to the left, for example, you must turn the front wheels of your tow vehicle to the right. Why? Because you are moving backwards. You are moving in the opposite direction compared to how you would move going forward.

So many people have trouble reversing trailers because they do not understand the physics of the manoeuvre. This is a classic example of why trailer training is so important before you take your test.

How We Train Our Students

The HGV Training Centre is one of the most reputable training companies in the UK because we get results. Our high success rates are a direct consequence of a training approach that focuses on teaching you only what you need to know to pass the trailer test. Furthermore, we give you the knowledge and skills you need through an intense training approach that presents information in short bursts.

We have found through many years of successful training that students learn more effectively in a fast-paced programme that takes advantage of short-term memory. We like to think of our approach as a building block approach. In other words, how do you build a large, sprawling office complex? One brick at a time.

It does not take long at all to lay a single brick. As soon as one brick is laid you put the next one down, and then the next, and so on. With short bursts of effort, you eventually get the entire building fully constructed. We teach drivers to tow trailers using the same principle. We focus on one concept at a time. Once that concept is mastered, we move on to the next one in a building block progression.

This training approach has proved to:

increase the volume of information learned
improve comprehension through progression
increase retention of information
improve recall at test time.

Our training approach is actually not novel at all. We are simply taking advantage of the way human beings naturally learn best. We learn by being presented with information and then having the opportunity to apply it through practice. We all learned maths and science that way, why would we attempt any other way of learning the principles of trailer towing?

We Make Training Affordable

The HGV Training Centre offers one-, three-, and five-day trailer training at affordable prices. Because of our size, we are able to effectively use all of our resources in a way that keeps our costs low. The money we saved through volume and efficiency we are able to pass along to you by way of very reasonable prices. In fact, we are fairly confident you will not find a trailer training programme in the UK offering the kind of value you get from us.

We further save you money by keeping our training programmes as short as possible. If you can learn everything you need to know in five days, there is simply no point in putting you through a course that takes 10 or 20 days. We do not extend courses simply to charge more money; we strive to maintain affordability at all times.

If you need trailer training but do not have the money sitting in your bank account, no worries. The HGV Training Centre works with Pay 4 Later to offer a financing package on each and every one of our courses. Financing your training enables you to get it done now and pay for it over time. This is a very popular programme for our professional drivers, but it is available to non-professionals as well.

We are confident in claiming that the HGV Training Centre is your best bet for nationwide, low-cost, intensive trailer training. Our industry-wide reputation speaks for itself. If you own a caravan or trailer of any size, we encourage you to receive proper training before you attempt to take the trailer test. And if you are already licenced, we hope you will consider taking a one-day course as an annual refresher. You can never go wrong with annual trailer training.

Learn more about Trailer Training

To find out more about training courses for trailer towing we have a selection of our other articles below: