Calling All Driving Instructors!

jumpycheese1

My ex's father is a independent driving instructor for 27 years. He first taught people living in his street and estate. Then, these people recommended him to their friends, family and colleagues. These people did recommend others etc. About 95% of his pupils know at least one person that have been with him.

You need to be flexible as you may pick pupils outside their work, college etc and pupils may ask to 'take' them to a different location - a friend, hospital etc. You need a good geographical knowledge, just in case these things happen. Also a good knowledge of cars, as pupils ask 'what's the cheapest car for me once I pass my test'

Also, you need to know which places the test instructors takes their testing pupils to do reversing corners etc. The test centre do some beasts of corners.

The_Undercover_ADI

I'd echo many of the above sentiments.

With regards to the TV ads - they're not actually lying, but I'd like to meet an instructor who they've trained who can prove they're earning £30k as a learner instructor on a franchise with them.

Someone mentioned the 2pass forum, which is good, but the dedicated ADI forums (www.drivertrainingtoday.co.uk and www.adiforum.co.uk among others) have many more members who are instructors who can give you an honest view of the trade.

Some love it, some are escaping at the moment (there is NO shortage of driving instructors - despite the sales pitches), and the majority are digging in to survive the next year or two.

The instructors most likely to survive are those who get lots of personal recommendations - the ones' who's original customers are now sending their kids to them. There are a few new ADIs who make a good living by being very good, innovative and likeable, combined with excellent business skills.

The rest are just hoping they'll get by.

Personally - I don't touch learners any more (I do professional driver risk assessments etc) as there's no money in it and after 5 years or so it becomes pretty tiresome answering the same "when can I book my test", "do you do 5 lessons for £50" and "why haven't I started doing manoeuvres yet" questions.

It can be a good career for those who have teaching in their blood and only need a part time income, but I have only trained 1 instructor in the last year as out of the 39 people who enquired about training, she was the only one who I felt was suited to the job, and had the skills to make it a worthwhile career.

You're a teacher, a support worker and a business owner. The driving is secondary to each of these.

Warlord_2

Any Instructors that want to put an end to the fraudulent misrepresentations of driving schools check out Instructors Unite.
Not allowed to put URL - but you can google it.

Daveyboy007_2

Just read all the comments on being a Driving Instructor and felt compelled to let you know how life currently is in the profession ! I qualified in 06 having got ripped off by one of those training organisations and ended up having to pay a small company to finish my training off. Ive given it 5 years now and its the worst move I ever made. Every instructor I speak to is suffering from lack of business, falling lesson rates and increased costs. I have had 1 year when i made something approaching £30k after costs but now the industry is in such a mess that even if you manage to get pupils ( that in itself is very very difficult eg i mailshotted 5000 leaflets advertising first lesson free and got 2 replies..... advertised in papers and got 1 reply ) and work your socks off day and night you will be lucky to nett £15 to £16k pa. ( Also no pension.... no paid hols )

1stDrive

OK so this thread hasn't been used for years but i've just found it and wanted to set the record straight. This is coming from someone who has been a driving instructor since the age of 18 (i taught for free on private land for 4 years to begin with) and i am now coming up to being 32.

Being a driving instructor itself is not a scam, what is a scam is the way that the training is sold. The fact is that if you're a good instructor you can earn £25,000 with ease. I know of some earning £100,000+ for not working at all thanks to growing a successful franchise. What isn't made clear is that all of this is very, very, very hard to do.

Everyone thinks driving is easy just because so many people do it but how many people with a licence can actually drive PROPERLY? About 1 in 1000. The rest just move cars around, that's not driving.

Because of this, people assume that being an instructor is easy. It's not. It's tiring, stressful, you get sore throats and bad backs all the time. You get other schools trying to put you out of business. You get angry parents who want to know why their darling little Jimmy hasn't passed after 2 lessons. On top of all that you get the 999 people in 1000 who can't drive and are intent on blasting the horn at you on every occasion, spectacularly missing the point that the whole reason we have L plates on is to show that the person driving can't drive. Blasting the horn does not help.

Some of the things written on here are totally false. Sky high insurance premiums? Mine is £430 a year for a brand new Feista, that's less than most people's i bet. High fees to be on the register? It's £75 a year, not even 1 days income! High training fees? You can have the whole lot done for around £1500 and you'll have earned that back in the first month!

I don't know if anyone will read this so i won't say anymore for now but if there is still interest, and if this thread is even still live after all these years, then let me know and i'll post more.

If you want to see my school just click on my username and see my homepage. Or search for 1stDrive and it's the first one you'll see. I run an honest school and i've listed the most common scams that learner fall for on there so feel free to take a look if you're interested, i'll be doing one for instructors soon.