The driving is the well regulated part. The licence proves he can handle the vehicle, and code 95 keeps that current with 35 hours of periodic training per five years, in Belgium under the KB of 4 May 2007 and in the Netherlands through the CBR, which requires at least one practical training of seven hours, allows at most 12 hours of e-learning, and lets ADR courses count for at most 14 of the 35.
None of that is the problem. Almost nothing that goes wrong in a transport operation happens while the vehicle is moving. It happens in the twenty minutes at either end, and in the paperwork.
Loading and securing
Damage, rework and injury concentrate here, decided by whoever builds the pallet and whoever closes the doors, often two different companies. Weight distribution, stacking rules for your products, which straps for which load, what to do when the customer's returns do not fit the plan. No qualification carries that. It is product and site knowledge, and it changes when the range changes.
Dangerous goods, on both sides of the tailgate
Two regimes, regularly confused. Drivers carrying dangerous goods need the ADR driver certificate: a basic certificate plus specialisations for tank transport, class 1 explosives and class 7 radioactive material, five years valid with a refresher test.
Everyone else falls under ADR chapter 1.3, which covers anyone whose function relates to the transport of dangerous goods: loaders, packers and warehouse staff. Three components, general awareness (1.3.2.1), function-specific training (1.3.2.2) and safety training (1.3.2.3), topped up periodically under 1.3.2.4 to reflect regulatory change. ADR sets no interval, so nobody can honestly call it a legal two-year cycle. Under 1.3.3 the employer keeps records of the training given and produces them on request.
A different set of rules at every address
A driver enters four, ten or twenty premises a day that are not his employer's, each with its own traffic plan, dock procedure, PBM rule and policy on leaving the cab during unloading. Where the work at that address goes beyond dropping a load, so where your people are effectively working in someone else's establishment, Belgian law puts a duty on that company as well: Welzijnswet of 4 August 1996, art. 9 requires it to inform external firms before the work begins about risks, prevention measures, emergency procedures, first aid and evacuation, and to check that their workers received appropriate training and onthaal. For an ordinary delivery the obligation to know the site rules still lands with you.
In practice that arrives as a laminated sheet at reception, or not at all. Making sure your drivers know the rules of the ten addresses they visit most is the cheapest prevention available to you.
Temperature, hygiene and the customer complaint
Where the load is food, the driver is a food handler. Regulation (EC) 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter XII requires that those handling food are supervised and instructed or trained in food hygiene in line with their occupational activity. No course, certificate or interval is prescribed, which is why it has to be built around the job: this cooling regime, this check, this record, and what to do when the reading is wrong at the dock.
The hours
Regulation (EC) 561/2006 is routinely half-known: nine hours of daily driving, extendable to ten twice a week, 56 hours in a week and 90 in two, a 45 minute break after four and a half hours of driving which may be split as 15 then 30 in that order, 11 consecutive hours of daily rest splittable into 3 plus 9, and 45 hours of weekly rest.
Nascholing is not site knowledge
Code 95 is a legal qualification with a national syllabus. It was never designed to carry instruction about your customers, your products or your procedures. That part is yours, and it changes far faster than five years.
Aristotl turns your load securing instructions, customer site rules and cold chain procedures into three to five minute courses a driver completes on his own phone, in his own language, before he takes the run, with knowledge checks and a record per driver, customer and version.
Send the site rules for your three hardest delivery addresses, and we will show you what a driver would get the evening before.