Truck driver licensing system is ‘putting lives at risk’, warns trainer

A leading Queensland truck driver trainer has sounded the alarm on what he says is a dangerously flawed heavy vehicle licensing system in the state.

John Skinner, the owner of Gold Coast Truck Driving School with 32 years of truck driving experience, said the current system is allowing unqualified and inexperienced assessors to determine who is fit to drive trucks.

“Right now, Queensland Transport is advertising for new driving assessors with no truck experience required. The only requirement is that you’ve held a licence for 12 months,” Skinner said.

“Front-counter staff are encouraged to get their licence and, a year later, they’re assessing truck drivers. No industry experience. No certificates. No real-world knowledge. That’s the reality.”

Skinner said his repeated warnings to authorities have been brushed aside, with senior staff offering responses he describes as dismissive.

“One admitted: ‘Truck drivers have the wrong attitudes and don’t suit being assessors’. Another confirmed most assessor recruits come from counter staff,” he said.

“If they advertised on Seek or in Big Rigs, they’d find plenty of experienced people.”

Even the training pathway to become a qualified instructor is lacking, Skinner argued.

“The official qualification to become a trainer — the Cert IV TLI41318 in Heavy Vehicle Driving Instruction — does not properly check for real-world truck experience. When I did mine, I wasn’t checked at all,” he said. “So, in hindsight, the RTO licensing system suffers from the very same problem as Queensland Transport — experience simply isn’t considered necessary.”

Skinner said his push for change is not about blaming new drivers or migrant drivers.

“The problem is the system itself: no experience, no standards, no safety.”

He said speaking out has also come with a personal price.

“I’ve been targeted. It’s affected my business. I’ve even been warned: ‘Don’t say anything or they’ll come after you,’” he said.

“If I cared only about money, I’d stay quiet. But I can’t. Because every day this continues, unsafe drivers are being licensed and lives are being put at risk.

Skinner has now taken his concerns directly to government, outlining them in a letter to the Transport Minister Brent Mickelberg.

“I am writing to raise urgent concerns about the current standards and practices within Queensland Transport’s heavy vehicle licensing system,” he wrote.

“What I have personally witnessed – and what is being defended by senior Transport leaders – poses a direct risk to public safety, breaches federal training laws, and undermines confidence in the licensing process.”

He said state authorities have repeatedly told him that “experience doesn’t matter” when it comes to assessing heavy vehicle licences.

“This approach has led to a system where the bar to pass has been lowered – not to improve road safety, but simply to increase pass rates. Examiners with little or no genuine truck experience are now responsible for licensing drivers of some of the heaviest vehicles on our roads,” he wrote.

Skinner said the assumption that holding a HR or HC licence for a period of time equates to competence is “negligent.”

Skinner said he has personally witnessed drivers being passed who were clearly not ready.

“I have seen candidates passed on tests who clearly lacked the necessary ability. One example: a driver who bunny-hopped through the test and admitted he was not ready – yet was still passed.

“That same person, simply because of time, held on to a licence and is now permitted to train or assess HR drivers. This is indefensible.”

Despite claims from Transport and Main Roads that assessors are supervised, Skinner said the reality is quite different.

“The reality is different: examiners are in trucks unsupervised, and in many centres there are no qualified leaders on site for days or weeks at a time. Even some supervisors – with years of service as driving examiners – continue to make serious errors in testing procedures, because they themselves came through a system that never required industry experience.”

Queensland Trucking Association CEO Gary Mahon said the challenge in the assessor and training space is that the better staff are often enticed into roles with fleets.

“It just further brings into focus the shortages that we have in this industry and the priority that needs to be given to proper training,” Mahon said.

“We need to get on the front foot and start apprenticing people.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Customer Services, Open Data and Small and Family Business, which now oversees examiners, said the state’s driving examiners undergo rigorous training and upskilling.

In addition, further training is tailored to examiners in rural and remote areas to meet local needs and different driving environments.

They also have a detailed understanding of the Queensland Driver Licence Assessment Guidelines (Q-SAFE), which ensures consistency and fairness in testing, the spokesperson said.

Skinner’s claims come after a Transport for NSW compliance review of the Heavy Vehicle Competency Based Assessment (HVCBA) scheme uncovered “serious breaches”, resulting in four NSW assessors having their accreditation cancelled.