Apprenticeship

FORK LIFT TRUCK APPRENTICESHIP

If you are aged 16-19, a fork lift truck apprenticeship offers an unusual and really interesting career, especially if you are "good with your hands". You will learn many new useful skills.

As for the prospects, well you can go as far as you want. After all, wherever goods are being delivered - to help factories, warehouses or docks - there's a fork lift truck to manage the heavy lifting. Your job will be to help keep them going. Many owners of the fork lift companies and senior managers in the industry started their careers as apprentices.

What's the deal?

Like cars, trucks must be regularly serviced - to ensure they work correctly and safely. Unlike a car though, most fork lift servicing is done 'on-site', which means engineers typically spend much of their day 'on the road' taking their mobile workshop to the customer. No two days are the same. Once trained as a fork lift truck engineer, you will be trained in electrical and hydraulic systems, diesel, gas powered engines and much more. It's not all 'spanners and oily rags' either. Like automotive engineers, fork lift specialists regularly use laptop or palmtop computers to diagnose problems or fine-tune fork lift truck performance.

The best route in is an apprenticeship - an 'earn-while-you-learn' scheme, lasting three years. you'll get around £430 a month - from day one - and receive allowances for when you attend college. To be successful you'll need to be keen and ideally have 3 GCSEs at grade 'C' or above. You need to be aged between 16 and 19 - but it is sometimes possible to include older students.

As an apprentice fork lift truck engineer you'll learn valuable skills - while meeting new people at your workplace and during your college time. Chances are you'll find an employer very close by. Currently, there are hundreds of Fork Lift Truck Association member sites throughout the UK, from small businesses to international manufacturers, where your skills will command a good salary. Aged 22 and with the apprenticeship completed, you will be well on your way to a sucessful future.

Best of all, it's a career path that offers lots of choice. You may prefer to stay on the technical side and progress to a parts or service manager. You may prefer to transfer to the sales side. If you are really ambitious, you might even set up your own business. Almost every independent fork lift fork lift dealership is owned by someone who began their working life as an apprentice engineer.

The apprenticeship programme is managed on behalf of the FLTA by the City of Bristol College. Three different locations are used for the college elements.

Bristol - City of Bristol College
Bedworth (Nuneaton) - North Warwickshire and Hinckley College

You can also download the full-colour, twelve-page pdf. version of the Fork Lift Truck Engineer Apprentice Scheme Brochure by clicking here.

Adam Turner is seen in the picture above picking up his Fork Lift Truck Association Award for the runner up Apprentice of the Year 2009 at the Birmingham Awards Ceremony from Mike Jones representing the award sponsors Crown Lift Trucks.

Adam has been trained at Hinckley College and runs out of our Boston depot under the direction of his Service Manager Gavin Taylor