HGV Practical Test Day: What Happens, Hour by Hour

Before you leave the yard

Your instructor will bring the vehicle to the test centre and you will normally have a short warm up drive first. Bring your photocard licence. If you cannot produce it the test cannot go ahead and the fee is lost, and that is the single most avoidable failure in the whole process. Wear boots or sturdy shoes you can feel the pedals through, and bring a bottle of water, because a dry mouth in the safety questions is a real thing.

Part one: vehicle safety questions

The examiner asks five safety questions before you drive. These are practical, not academic: showing where you would check the oil, explaining how you would know an air leak was developing, pointing out the load security features on the body. You are allowed to open panels and physically show things, and you should, because demonstrating is easier than describing. Get one wrong and it is a driving fault, get all five wrong and it is a serious fault.

Part two: the off road exercise

Next comes the reversing exercise on the manoeuvring area, and for articulated vehicles the uncoupling and recoupling exercise. Both are done before you go on the road. If you fail the manoeuvre with a serious fault the examiner will normally still take you out on the road, so keep your head; more than one trainee has driven a flawless hour after a shaky start.

Part three: the road drive

The road section lasts about an hour on a mix of roads. From the Glasgow area that usually means residential streets, a stretch of dual carriageway, roundabouts and at least one tight urban section where positioning and mirror discipline matter. Within the drive the examiner will ask for an uphill start, an angled start pulling out from behind a parked vehicle, and a controlled stop.

You will also do around ten minutes of independent driving, following either traffic signs or a series of verbal directions. The examiner is not testing navigation. If you take a wrong turn, that is not a fault; how you deal with realising it is.

• Mirrors before every signal, every change of speed and every change of direction.
• Hold your road position, do not drift left because a car is coming the other way.
• Use the vehicle's size to your advantage; take roundabouts at a pace that lets you stay in lane.
• Talk to yourself if it helps, examiners do not mind.

How you are marked

Fifteen driving faults sounds generous, and it is, but they cluster. Two mirror faults early usually means five by the end, because the habit does not fix itself mid test.

The result and the debrief

The examiner gives the result verbally as soon as you park up, then talks through the marking sheet. Your instructor can sit in on that debrief if you want, and you should let them, because it is the most useful ten minutes of feedback you will get. If you have passed, the pass certificate goes off and your licence is updated by DVLA, usually within a few weeks, though you may drive on the strength of the pass immediately in most cases.

If it does not go your way

About one in seven of our trainees needs a second attempt, and it is rarely a disaster. There is a minimum three working day gap before a retest. We look at the marking sheet, book a focused half day or full day on whatever went wrong rather than repeating the whole course, and rebook. Retraining and retest fees are charged at cost and we will tell you what they are before you commit.

Why our pass rate sits where it does

We run 85 per cent first time passes, and that is not luck. It comes from one to one and one to two training rather than a bus load of trainees taking turns, from putting people in for test when they are ready rather than when the diary says so, and from drilling the safety questions and the manoeuvre until they are boring.