i did learn what the lines mean woven into the strap and i remember him going over the label and mentioning the kite marks amongst other things.
i know the first proper job did cpc training yearly in house be that with thier own company trainer or one brought in. however i joined them just before lockdown as an agency bod so was thee for 8 months before they took me on direct then they put me through the packages adr so i cannot speak to what they would of done the next year as i left 9 months after that.
As zac says, a lot of sketchy courses can get validated now, so it is a box ticking exercise all round. I don’t subscribe to the idea it is a money making scheme, I don’t think it is. What is it then? I haven’t got the foggiest idea, all I do know is that we have to sit there to get a card and keep on driving.
Some of the early ones I did, the CPC instructor was putting on funny clips and letting us go for stupid amounts of breaks because there wasn’t enough material and we were all at our wits end sitting there. The only thing that really broke up the day was drivers or the instructor coming up with stories to tell.
don’t get me started on that bloody plastic wrap that’s a whole other rant. suffice to say that i don’t give a monkeys weather its 2 layers or 50 i don’t trust it and im strapping the bugger.
had that load been on a box trailer every other row i would of put two straps across in an x or two load bars if i had to use them. I assume “internals” can be used in the same way as well as top to bottom to stop sideways movement
this seems in my experience a regular occurrence and once again “no ones problem” I used to have to take a pallet of glass sample jars down to fawley we werent allowed to break the pallet down and put it on two pallets. the boxes were so weak that if a June bug landed on it it would of caused it to wobble. Every time i went there with them the customer moaned at me. In the end i took pictures of it coming off the lorry and onto my van so they could see it was how it came.
The lines woven in are just an indication, and are only a decent indication if the strap is in sound condition. Any recent ratchet strap should probably bear a CE mark not the BSI Kite Mark, though a very new strap may show the Kite Mark now we’re out of Europe, but I haven’t seen one as yet. Did he explain why you shouldn’t use a scaffy bar or other lever when tightening the strap? And where you should NOT attach the ends of the strap?
EDIT: internal straps are only OK for pallets of 400kg or less, guess what you get for using internals on a pallet over 400kg?
From the Operators point I view I understand your point, but if the company are being investigated, DVSA will tut-tut, wag their finger, and put crosses instead of ticks on their checklists
nope i wouldn’t of thought it would be needed again only done box vehicles if you did them up too tight you pulled the fixing off the wall. To be honest most of what i have learnt about securing loads is what other drivers have told/shown me or my own research
he did tell us that if the strap has nicks or cuts or fraying don’t use it
no idea as i said fridge boxes and the like only have one place that i have seen to attach straps. However i would assume you wouldn’t attach them to anything flexible for example the mud guard. I would attach them to the frame of the trailer if possible or provided anchor points if things exist
You’re right, no one is going to be driving around in a Maserati from doing DCPC.
The government (in the form of DVSA) get £8.75 per driver per day, an online provider can cut overheads to the bare bone, but still needs to spend £1260 per year for his course approvals and £1500 every five years for centre approval. There’s several hours worth of work post course sorting the paperwork and uploads, classroom providers have all the overheads that come with any premises, including the various insurances. Then there is advertising, trainer approval with JAUPT/DVSA, dealing with registering scheduled courses on the JAUPT website, lots of miscellaneous paperwork like creating a Scheme of Control. Creating the courses is time consuming, especially when you’re trying to make them better than AN Other rubbish provider. And lets not forget paying for an accountant and GDPR fees, creating snazzy digital certificates to send to each customer, as well as maintaining all your records for inspection (six years for GDPR). And if all this is too much for a one-man-band, whose earnings are starting to look a lot like minimum wage when you factor all the hours in, they going to need some admin assistance.
And, there’s the monotony of repeating your five courses over and over again.
I can imagine. There are also the courses where the trainer lets people go to sleep as long as they don’t snore. This is why DVSA/JAUPT have External Visitors (checkies) who turn up with clipboards, tickbox listlist and an attitude, then start picking apart what they didn’t like, because they need to find some way of justifying their visit.
I did hear about one external observer who fell asleep once. 
LOL, this is what they get for employing blokes well into their retirement age. I think Diesel Dave told of seeing this once himself too
I know what he felt like, I think I’ll continue to leave this discussion to you young fellas. 
Attachment points, which usually look like some kind of D-ring, and should be marked with a rating; and never on the ropehooks along the side of the vehicle. Yet, countless times you see a guy with a ratchet “device” on a rope hook and levering the heck out of a ratchet with a scaffy bar.
By Beelzebub’s beard! The auto censor has a filthy mind, reading obscenities into everyday industrial terminology, I mean it’s not as if I was trying to post something like this…
Now that I do understand, when I designed all the demount bodies for our new wagon and drags at Toray, I insisted in having ring bolts set in the floor of every one, even though we did not need them for our work.
But so much is trial and error, ok as long as you don’t wait till you get on the road to find the error. The very first of our bodies to arrive had simple round section poles inserted in anchoring points above and below. The first load of loose rolls of fabric to go on it showed the problem very soon. The bars started to bend outwards. If that had happened on the road they would have sprung from the anchors and the picture would have been similar to the one above. Instead we unloaded it and the makers came up with the idea of encasing the round bars in long box sections. Problem solved, perfectly safe. 
Arrr! Got you, thanks.
Very much looking forward to my upcoming CPC course next Monday. It starts at 2pm so I can go to the pub the night before and finishes at 9pm so I’m still in time for the pub afterwards… Winner 
Our planners do get it right occasionally.