• The lack of drivers in school transport is one of the great fears of this start of the 2022 school year.

  • Near Toulouse, Louis, a 48-year-old father, is about to experience his first driving tour.

  • Entering training almost by chance, he approaches his new job with enthusiasm and is lucky to have found a full-time job.

He will not miss the call.

Thursday, Louis, 48, will make his first comeback as a school bus driver in the suburbs of Toulouse.

And we feel this beginner, smiling and zen, both impatient to “see fifty kids smiling in the rear view mirror” and well focused on the mantra of his new job: “Flexible and dynamic”.

No question of indulging in nervous or enthusiastic driving with a 13-meter-long machine and a three-meter "overhang" at the rear when it turns;

but there is no question either of dragging oneself along hesitantly creating traffic jams.

Initially unconvinced

"You shouldn't confuse driving with a bus and driving, I discovered a real job that is not given to everyone", underlines the father of three children.

A profession above all that he had never considered exercising barely six months ago.

A career salesman, he briefly set up a box in 2019. “Just before the arrival of Covid-19, it was quickly over,” he admits.

Then last March, while he was multiplying the interviews without a future, he came across an announcement from the Occitanie region, impatient to recruit when a shortage of school drivers was announced.

“My Pôle emploi adviser told me that it was a branch where there was never a lack of work.

So I said to myself, why not, at worst I would have the D license, it could give me an additional pension later, ”says the driver.

Louis didn't do things by halves.

He not only passed and obtained the famous license but also won his professional driver's title.

He ingested the “colossal” mass of regulations and understood, when part of his class failed to drive on the set, that there was an element of innateness, of chance.

"Reversing a niche with a coach, some people don't have the predispositions, that's how it is".

The retraining salesperson has tamed a profession that is both technical and user-friendly.

"I really discovered a vocation", says the one who got his hands dirty this summer by bringing outdoor centers to the swimming pool.

Even his children find him changed.

“I'm blossoming and it shows at home,” he confides, absent-mindedly touching his Brazilian bracelet.

Driving morning and evening, at the office the rest of the time

His Pôle Emploi adviser had also warned him: "it's 1,300 euros per month at the start, if you are lucky enough to work full time".

Not to mention the days cut off.

Two hours of work in the morning, starting at 6:30 a.m., two hours in the evening, returning home around 7 p.m.

But, on this point, Louis fell well.

At Alcis, the transport company that hired him, there is no shortage of tasks.

"There are even administrators who have the D license and who occasionally take the wheel", explains Fabrice Marcon, his boss, Le profil de Louis pleased him.

Apart from his tours, he entrusted him with the organization of Blablacar trips from the headquarters.

Through them, Louis rubs shoulders with long distances, a niche of experienced drivers that he would like to join.

“In a few years, without cutting corners”.

The immediate is the start of the school year on Thursday and this tour for which he admits that he is doing reconnaissance by car.

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  • Back to school 2022

  • Toulouse

  • Occitania

  • Transportation

  • Use