Expensive fuel to raise the price of driver training | New

Indrek Madar, a board member of Autosõit OÜ which trains potential drivers in several regions of Estonia, said that although the driving school has not raised prices this year, the issue should be addressed. at a board meeting on Wednesday.

“Keeping in mind that the price per liter of fuel has gone from €1.3-1.4 to €2.2, this is a significant expense for us, alongside labor costs” , did he declare. “It’s too early to say if we’re going to make this decision now, when there’s clearly a pain threshold somewhere. Instructors want to get paid and feed their families. We can’t start buying fuel at the expense of instructor salaries.

Madar added that prices have not risen so sharply in the past and the situation is new for everyone.

Enn Saard, member of the board of the driving school Aide, pointed out that if a passenger car consumes one liter of fuel per hour and a truck four or five litres, it is not difficult to calculate how much a driving lesson has become more expensive.

Saard said that while Aide paid no attention to when someone started studying before, she is now discussing whether to introduce a time limit, so people who started learning six months ago or a year can no longer drive for the same price as when they started. Otherwise, the school could plunge into the red with student driving lessons which began three years ago.

The driving school last raised its prices around the start of the year, but Saard suggested it will have to adjust them again in the near future.

“The pressure on wages is on top of everything else. Our people also want to be able to pay their electricity bills,” Saard said, adding that the school was not monitoring the competition’s pricing policy because customers do not were not missing.

LRK Autokoolitus OÜ, active in Viljandi, Paide and Rapla, has tried to avoid the price increase so far in the hope that the fuel price increase will be temporary,” said Jaan Kleemann, board member of administration.

“But it seems to be changing from temporary to permanent now,” he said, adding that if the company doesn’t raise prices this summer, it will have to work with a loss, which is hampering development.

Many future students

Driving schools have not noticed that the general increase in prices has an impact on people’s interest in learning to drive. Indrek Madar said the market has been unstable due to the coronavirus for two years, which is why it is impossible to speak of regular trends, while the school has not seen a drop in the number of students; quite the contrary.

Enn Saard said people are used to rising prices and that being part of Europe also means European prices. For example, it costs €1,700-1,800 to obtain a Class B license in Finland, while Aide offers the package, complete with dark and slippery driving training, for €905.

Kleemann said that the best indicator of economic interest is the number of people who want to obtain an A license (for a motorbike – editor’s note), or the number of so-called amateur drivers. The number of customers after an A license has not decreased for LRK Autokoolitus to suggest that people still have money.

Estonia has about 300 driving schools and twice as many driving instructors. As is the case in many other fields, driving schools also have difficulty finding instructors.

“There are none available even if you look closely, and we have not yet taken up the offer to pay instructors from other schools more. We have trained our own instructors and paid for their training Madar said, suggesting that a driver instructor training spans at least 750 hours and lasts seven to nine months.

Kleemann said LRK Autokoolitus had the same team for over a decade, so people will want to retire at some point, which means they are already thinking about it.

“They [instructors] are not easy to find,” he admitted.

The price of fuel broke the all-time record in Estonia on Tuesday when customers of major petrol station chains had to pay €2,259 for a 95 liter petrol. The price of diesel fuel was €1,999 per litre. and that of 98 octane petrol €2.309 per litre.

The head of the Estonian Petroleum Association, Mart Raamat, said the situation remains unstable, which is why he sees the price falling this summer.

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