Medium Rigid (MR) Licence Brisbane

You need

• A valid Australian car (class C) licence held for at least 12 months. Provisional counts.
• Secondary identification
• Fully enclosed footwear for training, boots or runners
• A functional level of English, since all training and assessment is conducted in English
• To declare you’re medically fit to drive the higher class. If you have a medical condition that could affect your driving, TMR will require a medical certificate from your doctor before you can upgrade.

Two reasons to choose MR over LR

• The vehicles you can drive. An LR stops at 8 tonnes GVM. Plenty of trucks that look modest sit above that once you check the compliance plate.
• Where it leads. An MR reaches HC after 12 months. An LR has to go through HR first, which adds a year and another test to the same destination.

1. 1

   Confirm you’re eligible and book. Give us a call or book online. We’ll check your licence history and current class against the requirements before you pay for anything.

2. 2

   Pass the TMR road rules knowledge test. Upgrading from a car licence means sitting a written road rules test with Transport and Main Roads. We book this on your behalf as part of the Full Package. There’s a free practice test you can work through beforehand and we’d recommend doing it more than once.

3. 3

   Complete your driving lessons. Three hours behind the wheel with an instructor at our Mansfield depot, in our truck. We cover vehicle checks, controls, road positioning, turning and clearances, reversing, mirror use and managing the length of the vehicle, plus the observation habits the testing officer is actually watching for. If you need more time, additional hours are $120 each and there’s no pressure to sit the test before you’re ready.

4. 4

   Sit the practical driving test. We book this for you and you sit it in a vehicle you’ve already trained in, which removes a lot of the guesswork. Pass and TMR reissues your licence with the MR class added. The new card arrives in the post within about 21 days, and heavy vehicle licences are issued as a magenta card showing the highest class you’re authorised to drive.

You don’t receive a certificate, a Statement of Attainment or an industry wallet card from us for this. An MR licence is a driver licence class, and TMR issues it.

What your test vehicle determines

• Test in an automatic and TMR adds an automatic (A) condition to your MR class. You can then only drive automatic MR vehicles.
• Test in a synchromesh manual and you may carry a synchromesh (B) condition, which permits manual gearboxes of the synchromesh type but not a constant-mesh Road Ranger style box.
• Test in a vehicle with no gearbox restriction and there’s no condition at all.

Two things worth knowing

• A condition doesn’t necessarily apply to every class on your licence. If you already drive a manual car and pick up an A condition on your MR, you keep driving manual cars. The exception is a car licence itself, where an automatic car licence shows as class CA.
• You can remove a condition later, but it means going back and passing another practical driving test in the relevant class in a vehicle without that restriction. It’s cheaper to sit the right test the first time.

• MR to HC after holding your MR for 12 months. MR and HR are the only two classes that reach HC, so an MR gets you there without ever sitting an HR test.
• MR to HR after 12 months, if what you actually need is a three-axle rigid truck or an articulated bus rather than a combination.
• HR or HC to MC after another 12 months, for B-doubles and road trains.