1500 Hours of Training Required

By Jim Powell, Transportation Development Group

Recently, when I was in Oklahoma City conducting a training class, I stopped in to get my hair cut at a local barber shop. I was greeted by a cheerful young woman who proceeded to cut my hair, and as she did, we got to talking about her business.

Evidently, she rents the booth from the salon and works hard to pay back the money she borrowed so that she could attend cosmetology school. You see, the state of Oklahoma requires 1500 hours of training to become a licensed cosmetologist.

When she asked me what I was doing in Oklahoma, I explained that I was doing some work at the FAA training academy over on MacArthur Blvd; and after further questioning, I explained that my business involved training people to ship “dangerous goods.”

“Oh, you mean, like training people to put dangerous chemicals on airplanes?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Wow, that must require a lot of training. How long is your class?”

“Well, the industry standard is three days, but there are many companies that do it in one day… so I guess, not counting lunch and breaks, the course is about 18 hours…”

I don’t think she believed me, and probably many outside our industry would be amazed as well. It takes nearly 100 times longer to become a “licensed” hairdresser in Oklahoma than it does to be “certified” to load deadly chemicals aboard a passenger aircraft.

What’s wrong with this picture? You can save this article, and let’s see three years from now if this prediction doesn’t come true: I predict that within that timeframe, the U.S. Government will have to step in and get in the business of reviewing and certifying dangerous goods training programs—at least for shipping by air. The D.O.T. was well-meaning in their decision to leave the degree of training up to the shippers – as long as they did appropriate general awareness, safety training, and “function-specific training,” they did not have to invest large amounts of time and money sending their employees off to training schools.

Yet, equally well-meaning shippers and freight companies who do go to training seminars to be “certified” would have no way of knowing that there is no such thing as a certified school (as far as the government is concerned). In the U.S., it is the employer, not the training company, who certifies their own employees. Also, consumers have no easy way of knowing if they are getting the right type of training… how does one know what they’ve not been taught the first time around?

Since the ValuJet disaster, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of companies popping up around the country offering “certification” and “DOT Approved” training. A recent training class by a major IATA airline touted their Los Angeles seminar as “DOT Approved”… that’s rubbish! There is no such thing as DOT approved training when it comes to training shippers and freight forwarders.

IATA certification for trainers is a good start, and frankly, it’s about all we have at this time in the U.S. for a standard. But even those standards are inconsistent as there is no standard IATA test. Sooner or later, there is going to be some sort of incident that will be discovered to be a result of insufficient training by a so-called ‘school,’ and then there will be hell to pay. Why don’t we, as an industry, take proactive steps to demand that the D.O.T. get involved now, before there is a problem, and at least ensure minimal standards (like having not only a technical background but actual industry experience) for people providing training in the shipping of dangerous goods. Nobody likes government intervention, and in a utopian world we could all do this on an honor system, but in the end, in today’s reality, if we don’t have established standards for DG training programs for everyone, then we’re just asking for trouble.

Jim Powell is President of Transportation Development Group, a company specializing in dangerous goods training and consulting for shippers, forwarders and carriers worldwide. He can be reached by email: jim@dgtraining.com and more information on this topic is available online at www.dgtraining.com