Tractor Driver CV Examples & Writing Guide

"Tractor driver" usually means farm work in the UK, but searches for it also turn up HGV adverts for tractor unit drivers, plus plant and council jobs. Work out which job you want before you write, because the certificates and the numbers are completely different.

• Farm tractor driver and agricultural machinery operator: field work with tractors and implements, drilling, spraying, cultivations, silage, hay and harvest. Hired on machinery experience, hectares covered, GPS guidance and spraying certificates. That is the job this page covers.
• HGV driver on an articulated lorry (tractor unit and trailer): road haulage on a C+E licence. Hired on your licence categories, Driver CPC, digital tachograph card, clean licence, drivers' hours compliance and safe miles. If that is your job, use the HGV driver CV guide instead.
• Construction and site plant operator: skid steers, backhoe loaders, and tractors with loaders and blades on construction and groundworks sites. Closer to plant operating, with a CSCS card and CPCS or NPORS tickets on the page.
• Council and grounds tractor operator: mowing, verge and hedge cutting, gritting, sports turf and park maintenance. Hired on machinery and seasonal availability, often with a council application form to fill in.

One page for a full-time machinery operator on a large arable farm. The name and farms are invented. Notice that the machinery is named by make and size, that the hectares are on the page, and that maintenance and downtime are treated as results. Farm managers hire operators who keep machines running, not just ones who can steer.

Farm hiring happens fast, usually a few weeks before a season starts, and it comes down to four things.

• What machinery you have run, by make and size. "John Deere 8R with a 12 m drill" places you immediately. "Operated farm machinery" makes a manager assume you drove a loader tractor once.
• Hectares and days. Hectares covered a day, hectares in a season, and how many field days it took you to finish a job. This is the productivity measure in farming and most applicants leave it off.
• Whether you can fix things. Farms lose money on downtime, not on labour. An operator who greases on schedule, changes their own hoses and knows when to call the dealer is worth substantially more than one who parks the machine and waits.
• Licences and certificates to do the work: driving licence categories (a car licence normally includes category F for tractors; C or C+E with Driver CPC if you haul by lorry), PA1 plus PA2 or PA6 if you spray, and a telehandler certificate. Name each exactly as it appears on the card.

“Tell me the tractors, the implements, the acres and whether you are certificated to spray. Then tell me the last thing you fixed in the field at nine at night. If someone can do that, I do not care much about the rest of the CV, and if they cannot, the rest of the CV will not save them.”

Three or four lines: type of farm, hectares, main machinery, licences and certificates. Use a career objective only if you have no farm work yet.

The numbers come from the farm's field records, the guidance system logs and your own memory of how long a season took.

Name makes and sizes. A farm manager is working out how much training you need before you can be trusted with a £500,000 machine in a narrow weather window.

• Tractors and self-propelled machines by make and series, plus horsepower range, tracks versus wheels, and loader work.
• Implements: drills with width and type, sprayers with boom width, fertiliser spreaders, cultivators, discs, ploughs and subsoilers by type and width, mowers, rakes, balers, forage harvesters, combines with header type and width, chaser bins, slurry and muck spreaders.
• Guidance and precision farming: RTK and other correction levels, guidance brand, auto-steer, section control, variable rate, yield mapping, field mapping and prescriptions, and the farm management software your farm uses.
• Maintenance and repair: daily servicing and greasing, fluids and filters, hydraulic hoses and fittings, belts, bearings and chains, drill metering and coulter service, nozzle and filter cleaning, tyre care, welding if you do it, and knowing when to stop and call.
• Agronomy basics that make you a better operator: seed depth and rate, soil conditions and compaction, residue management, product labels and rates, tank mixing order, drift, wind speed limits and buffer zones near water.
• Licences and certificates: your driving licence categories and record (category F for tractors comes with a full car licence; C or C+E with a Driver CPC card if you drive lorries), PA1 plus PA2 or PA6, and a telehandler certificate from Lantra or City & Guilds NPTC. Agricultural trailers have their own rules on weights, brakes, plating and speed, so check the GOV.UK guidance for what your tractor and trailer may carry rather than assuming.
• Safety practice: PTO guarding, rollover protection and seat belt use, hitching and towing, road rules for wide and slow machinery (beacons, lights, escorts), grain store entry, COSHH and personal protective equipment, and Safe Stop before working on a machine.
• Seasonal reality: availability for 14 to 16 hour days through drilling and harvest, weekend work, and whether you can travel with a contractor.

Farms take on seasonal help every spring and harvest and expect to train. What they need to know is whether you will work the hours and treat expensive machinery carefully.

1. 1Lead with any machine you have operated: skid steer, backhoe loader, excavator, forklift, tipper, mower, gritter. Say the hours and the setting. Machine feel transfers even when the machine does not.
2. 2Put your licence categories and record on the page. Farms move machinery on public roads, and an operator who can also haul is worth more.
3. 3Say plainly that you can work long seasonal days. Fourteen-hour days for six weeks is the actual job during drilling and harvest, and being upfront about it is a selling point.
4. 4Use any mechanical work you have done: car repair, small engines, welding, hydraulics, farm work as a teenager. Give specifics rather than saying you are mechanically minded.
5. 5Offer to start in a support role. Chaser bin, cultivations, carting and tractor and trailer work are where new operators are put, and saying you would take that reads as realistic rather than as low ambition.
6. 6Get PA1 (and PA2 if you can), plus Emergency First Aid at Work and a telehandler course. They remove a limit on what you can be given to do and show you are thinking about the job seriously.

• One page. Farm managers read on a phone, often standing in a machinery shed.
• Order: name with farm type and hectares, contact with licence and spraying certificates, personal statement, experience, machinery and skills, certificates, education.
• No photo, no date of birth, no columns, no graphics. Many farms take CVs by email or WhatsApp.
• Mirror the advert: "arable", "drilling", "sprayer", "cultivations", "combine", "chaser bin", "RTK", "auto-steer", "C+E", "PA1/PA2", "telehandler", "seasonal", "harvest", and the machinery brands they run.
• Give hectares and daily coverage. It is the clearest productivity signal you have.
• Say when you are available. Farm hiring runs on the calendar: operators are hired in February and March for spring work, and in May and June for silage and harvest.
• Include a phone number you answer, and expect a call rather than an email.

One more thing worth adding: references from farms you have worked on, with phone numbers. Farming runs on word of mouth more than almost any other field, and a manager will usually call one before they call you.