A common complaint across the industry is that putting new operators through training and assessment is too costly and time-consuming. A case in point from late 2023 put this to the test.
I usually begin these articles with a trip down memory lane. I suppose I could talk about the introduction of Forest Machine Operators Certificates (FMOC), the infamous ‘tickets’. Many if not all of the operators at the time had enough experience to brush up on the safety and environment questions and gain the competence ticket without too much trouble. I recall the machines were the biggest problem for me. I took mine on a 909 Lokomo with a penchant for leaking oil and a JCB 812 equipped with a Tapio head. I doubt if either one would be allowed on a Forestry England site today, but they served their purpose at the time.
A big problem for an industry short of new drivers is that starting out from scratch is not easy.
You need experience to get a job but you need a ticket to get experience, and you need a job to get experience to get a ticket. A new driver can purchase a registration and a provisional, which will allow them to get experience if they can find a machine to learn on and a contractor willing to have a machine on low production for the duration of the learner’s training period. Finding a contractor to help is probably easier than finding a training course, even if you have the money to spend. It’s a little-known (or often-ignored) fact that the learner should do a minimum of 90 hours on the machine, all of which must be under the supervision of someone with the relevant FMOC. Supervision isn’t just watching the machine trundling about from a distance. It involves spending time with the trainee on a one-to-one basis in the early stages and periodic exchanges of questions and answers almost up until the assessment.
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I had a conversation relevant to this subject with my forest works manager (FWM) late in the summer of 2023. He told me he would like to take his forwarder ticket. He’d driven a tractor with a timber trailer when he’d worked for a contractor before he’d moved into management. I wasn’t minded to take him seriously as I’ve heard this many times before, but unlike previous managers he’d proved to be more serious than most. He’d offered to fell some trees on a site where we’d had an issue with a badger sett identified after we’d signed the contract. I wasn’t for losing money because I’d not priced in hand felling a long strip of trees I’d expected to be done with the harvester. I was more than a little surprised when he said that he’d got permission to crack on doing the felling. I was even more surprised when he did a decent job of it.
I did try to dissuade him from pursuing a forwarder ticket by detailing the cost and inconvenience. None of this fazed him, so I agreed to let him have a morning on the machine when I would tell him if he was likely wasting his money and my time.
It was a wet, windy morning when we did my little ‘let’s just see where we are’ examination of his potential. We walked around the machine doing all the little things drivers take for granted when they have the experience of many years. We did a rudimentary safety check, ensuring no flat tyres, no pipes hanging off and no pools of oil under the machine. We raised the bonnet, checked the levels, checked the belts and put the isolator in. Then he was allowed into the cab.
We went through a mock start procedure, the warm-up and how to switch everything on. Then came the biggest surprise. I began to demonstrate what the crane controls did, but he already knew. Or so it seemed.
He started the machine, switched everything on and picked the crane up, proving he could work all the functions and knew what they did. I had him park the crane and raise the steps, then click the drive in and turn up the ground speed. I stayed with him until I was sure he could stop the machine if he had to. The last thing I pointed out was the big red emergency stop button, telling him: “If you get into trouble, just smack that.”
He drove the machine back and forth and round about the clear-fell we had just finished.
I stopped him, he lowered the steps and turned the machine off. “Right, you can have a go at loading some wood.”
I climbed back into the cab, which is not really big enough for a second body, and supervised him putting a few grabs of chipwood on. Then I got him to throw them back off. The only real comment I had was that he wasn’t putting the machine in the right position to load from the ground, instead picking the timber up from too far back along the side of the bunk.
By lunchtime he was on his second full load of chip. I let him unload and sent him to park the machine.
“Get your provisional, you’ll pass an assessment with a bit of practice. Oh and by the way, there’s no way this is the first time you’ve driven a forwarder.”
It wasn’t, but it was the longest time he’d been on one in a single day.
The provisional was duly acquired and every holiday day he could get he spent on the forwarder.
I had him leading out single bunks of three-metre chip for a few days, then two bays of 2.5-metre pallet and finally one bay of pallet and one bay of dunnage on the same load. One of the things he would have to do during the driving element of the assessment was bring out two different products on the same load – one bunk of each. We would aim for pallet and dunnage.
When he was clearly becoming comfortable I dropped the technical part of the assessment into the conversation. It was becoming second nature to do the pre-start checks using the PUWER checklists from our compliance manager. Now it was time to learn everything he could about the machine. I was given an original Valmet manual with the machine when I bought it, but it was so original, it was written in Swedish. I paid £110 + VAT for an English version which I was loath to lend out, but he had to learn the technical specifications, so I handed it over. Then I began dropping questions into the conversation like, “what does it weigh?” and “what size are the tyres?” I didn’t think anything much more technical than that would be needed.
Just a few weeks into his six-month provisional period, a trainer asked if I knew anyone who needed an FMOC assessment. He was due his two-yearly skills verification before the end of the year and he’d be willing to do it in Yorkshire because his verifier would be in the area in late December. We booked an assessment for the 21st and not only would there be an assessor and verifier on site, the assessment centre wanted to send an observer to see the whole process.
There would be three people watching him – no pressure then. Again my young student seemed totally unfazed, asking: “Could I do a chainsaw skills upgrade at the same time? I have a while before I need to do a refresher, but I never got around to doing a windblow ticket.”
I asked and yes, he could do the FMOC in the morning and the chainsaw upgrade in the afternoon. This was only because he was a single candidate and so long as we got started early it would work.
Sometime in late November we moved onto the health and safety and environment parts of the assessment. Given this candidate was already an FWM, writing risk assessments and compliance with legislation was pretty well covered; only the finer details of what this meant for operating the machine would need work. Technical questions asked of a driver are designed to have them demonstrate how well they know the machine. Cooling system, charging system, hydraulics, fire suppression – all these and more can be subjects for discussion. My candidate was quizzed on the machine’s batteries – how to maintain them, what makes them dangerous and under what circumstances they might explode.
The day came around and if you can think back to the Thursday before Christmas you’ll remember it blew an absolute gale the night before, and it was still a howling gale first thing on the day. In fact, things didn’t get off to a great start. Along with all our vehicles, the assessor, verifier and observer, we had a wagon waiting to load, but a large pine was laid across the road into the site. This meant we had to round it up and remove it with the forwarder before we could get on with anything.
With the road open and everyone parked, the day could begin. I did a stock measure as we were finishing for the holidays a day early. I walked the area of trees which were shown as a retained feature on the contract maps but which the forester wanted felled as it would only blow over.
Then I drove around the loop road that offered an alternative route out of the site, checking there were no more trees down anywhere. I stopped and poured myself a cup of tea, then walked over the top end of the site checking for rubbish. I realised then I was actually nervous. I hardly ever get nervous – not since I had to sing a song as part of a duet in a school play, when my companion froze and I had to carry on alone. I was eight years old and my singing voice was no better then than it is now.
I have done endless tests, upgrades, refreshers both in forestry and in other walks of life, and I just don’t get nervous. I have also been badly hurt, suffered severe lacerations, broken bones and I’ve had hundreds of stitches over the years, and it never bothers me. I can watch stitches being put in my own skin and not flinch. I don’t like seeing someone else cut or in pain and I certainly can’t watch someone else being stitched. It would appear this nervousness by proxy is something similar and would preclude me from ever being a trainer.
The day went remarkably well. He breezed through the technical questions, health and safety and environment were navigated without problem and the driving too caused no concerns. He was steady, but accurate, with no dropped timber, no dodgy stacking and no reversing while loaded. The only question was whether two products of the same length satisfied the requirements, but as one was 9–15 cm top diameter at 2.47m and the other was 15–30 cm at 2.52m long it was decided it did and the assessment was declared to have been concluded satisfactorily.
The windblow ticket in the afternoon was successful too – not surprising as by noon most of the remaining trees on site were now suitable for the assessment.
So it took just over three months to go from getting a provisional to reaching the standard to gain a Forest Machine Operators Certificate for a forwarder. I don’t know if a harvester ticket could be done in the same time frame, but with a little talent, opportunity and mentoring I don’t see why not.
The costs, though, are considerable. I normally extract 10–12 loads a day. This came down to around half that on the days we were training. Later on I could have most of the day to myself, once I had started him off, leaving a colleague to supervise as we both have the relevant FMOCs.
For my part, I don’t see the cost as anything other than incidental given the outcome. Had he failed I might have felt differently.
The cost to the learner is more. He gave up around 12 days of holiday and Saturdays along with the cost of registration, a provisional, an assessment and considerable time studying the guidance supplied by the test centre. His direct costs were around £500 and with his time costed in I reckon on well north of £1,000, possibly as much as £1,500, just to get one FMOC.
So that’s what it costs to get one of the tickets needed. He now has all his chainsaw tickets and to get up to the same level as myself he would need to do his harvester with grapple felling and processing which would be more involved than the forwarder. I also have a skidder ticket, articulated and rigid, a tracked slewing ticket and other variants that are no longer included.
This is a salutary lesson. We did this on the cheap but within the rules and it still cost a fortune.
You could argue that it only cost the price of the paperwork, but no one else will write off their time. We all know that anyone we’re engaging to do work, whether it be a service fitter, an electrician or a hand cutter, will all want paying for every minute. Don’t get me started on solicitors, accountants and financial advisors – they seem to be able to pull charges out of thin air. Who can blame them, really? Anyone in business now is being hammered by high costs.
There is little that’s cheap and nothing that’s free.
We see a lot in the media about how there is a shortage of drivers, a veritable crisis, and there’s much debate as to why. Well, my friends, the answers are obvious. It’s a hard job, it’s unsociable and compared to other trades it’s not particularly well paid, plus you need to invest a big lump of your own cash to even get the chance to find out if it’s something you are willing, or able, to do as a career.
Since the inception of the much-vaunted ticket system, which started with chainsaws back in the early 1990s, there’s been a growth in the training sector which, at the time, was a brand-new industry. It appears to me its growth has coincided with the decline of the industry it feeds off. It is a relationship that’s more parasitic than symbiotic and it can only end when forestry contracting is added to the list of lost trades. Getting rid of the workforce is a surefire way of improving the accident figures. After all, you don’t see many wheelwrighting incidents on the HSE’s accident bulletins.
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