Edit: Netherlands also has something similar with older licenses, so it's likely that not only Germans but more foreigners in the UK got this letter.
I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that older licenses that had these sort of automatic endorsements unbacked by any experience should have been excluded from the letters – so there is a story here. 1999 was 22 years ago!
EDIT: Downvote? For giving extra information? In case this is post-Brexit racism, I don't live in the UK so keep it to yourselves.
These days the licenses are only valid for 10 years, so the picture might actually be useful.
It sure was. Back then, a mule pulled my car. We didn't have rubber tires, I'd take the wheels to the wheelwright's shop and have a new iron rim put on now and then. On the weekends I'd go varmint hunting with my trusty flintlock.
But some of the fanciest programs, like the Bourne Shell, were even more automatic: they didn't have to manually manage each allocation either. You'd simply write right on the heap and have your SIGSEGV handler do a brk() every so often!
To free up memory on our systems, we bought new system and moved the old ones into a landfill.
Permanent storage was on stone tablets, but read/write times were REALLY LONG. Backups took a really long time, too. Restoring was pretty quick, because you would just put the last-known-good tablets into the machine.
Provided you take corners carefully and use all the mirrors, a "box van" or a smaller "Luton" is easy enough to drive. The controls are pretty obvious and familiar but hillstarts and reverse hill starts need a little practice. When loaded, allow extra stopping and maneuvering space!
I like being able to just rent one if I need it, without going through complex licensing rigamarole like you do in Europe, and apparently lack of it has not caused the society to collapse ( we have not had terrorist truck attacks either). I find the American lenient system much more preferable.
It was pretty much the same in Germany. It was changed when the system was switched over to the new European driving license which was implemented in July 1996. Anyone who got theirs after the change will usually only have class B for up to 3.5t plus a 0.75t trailer.
I'm a German who actually happens to have C1E. So who much do you currently pay for lorry drivers?
If you search for "salary HGV UK" you get £19-24K. That was probably last year and frankly wrong, now.
I'm an IT consultant and MD of the firm and now wondering if I should get my big rig thang on! OK, I can drive a 7.5 tonner on my driver's license and have done so, many times. I can also drag a trailer, according to my license.
On a related note there's a meme going around of Boris asking the Queen if she would drive a truck since she did in WW2.
It's a bug in the query, at most.
That's essentially a lorry.
If I got a truck license more than 20 years ago (before 1999) but never drove a truck in my life, I would definitely feel uncomfortable driving a truck. Shit, I feel a bit uncomfortable driving my car after a two or three month break. For 20 years to elapse between licensing and putting that activity into practice seems justifiably eyebrow raising to me. The headline doesn't even mention the 20 elapsed years part of it.