4WD EXPEDITIONS · Expedition Command

CONVOY COMMAND: LEADING A GROUP THROUGH REMOTE COUNTRY

13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production

The point

After this lesson you can run a mixed-ability group through remote country with a command structure, a comms protocol and a decision process that hold together when something goes wrong.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. Build the command structure in the driveway, not at the creek. Before departure, name the roles out loud and confirm them: lead, tail-end sweep, a deputy who takes over if the lead is the one in trouble, whoever holds the highest first aid training, and who owns comms and the satellite device. Establish the decision rule at the same time, and be direct about it: this is a friendly trip, and at the moment of risk it is not a democracy. One person makes the call, everyone else has the right to raise a concern and the obligation to comply. People accept that easily in a driveway and resent it deeply at an obstacle, which is exactly why you settle it early. Collect the honest capability picture too: who has driven this country, who has recovered a vehicle for real, who has a modified vehicle they have never loaded, and who is quietly out of their depth and has not said so.
  2. Order the convoy for capability and for reach. Put the least experienced vehicle directly behind the lead, so they can follow the leader's line and the leader can watch them in the mirror. Put the most capable vehicle with the best recovery gear at the tail, because it needs to be able to reach anything ahead of it and because the sweep is the person who owns the fact that nobody is left behind. Vehicles most likely to break, the oldest or the heaviest laden, sit in the middle where help exists in both directions. Trailers go where they will not block a passing point or plug a narrow section. Then set the spacing rules, which change with the ground: wide dust spacing on gravel so nobody drives blind, closer sight spacing on tight scrub tracks, and single-vehicle spacing at obstacles, meaning one vehicle in the obstacle at a time and the next one held back on ground where it can still reverse and still winch. Underneath all of it runs one rule that solves most convoy problems: every driver is responsible for keeping the vehicle behind them in sight, and nobody passes a junction until they have eyes on the next vehicle.
Still under the glass
  • Radio protocol, incident procedure, and the briefing that holds a mixed group together
  • 6 more technique steps
  • The 6 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

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