Looking for advice: Former driver, making a comeback with wife.

Howdy all, first time posting here. So, here's the rundown, perhaps I can get some advice from those who may have been in a similar situation:

I've driven in the past (Back in the '90s) solo and then more recently (back around '05) with the wife for a few months as team drivers. Long story short, I was a smoker and had high blood pressure that to this day I have no clue how I ever managed to pass a DOT physical. But that's another story. The bottom line is, I couldn't get any rest in the truck and the fatigue really took its toll. Wasn't long before we quit during a weekend off.

Now, we still have our CDLs and we get DOT physicals on a regular basis (Annually for me because I'm now on BP meds that help a ton, the missus every two years) but we have zero driving experience in the past 3 years (which companies tend to want for some strange reason) and therein lies our quandary...

We need to get back into trucking but most of the companies we've spoken to say "Go back to school." Well, okay, but isn't that kind of silly to go back to school for something you already have? So I did some research and found that several schools offer "Refresher courses" just for drivers like us.

So here's where I'm hoping you all can help me out: We live in Indiana so we're looking for a driving school that A) Is affordable B) Offers refresher courses and C) Is decent. Indianapolis would be best, but we're flexible.

Here's the kicker - We'd like to know if anyone knows of any companies out there who will cover the expenses of the refresher course or that offers a refresher course themselves, as money is currently tight and we're hoping to avoid a huge school bill for the both of us.

We're also open to any suggestions on companies themselves.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. SAGE...or otherwise.

 

Thanks for the feedback SteveB. As it stands right now, we have two companies interested in us and as usual, the two are at odds with each other with what we should do.

Company A says for us to go to C1 driving school in Indy, Company B says go to SAGE since they're fairly cheap. Of course, Company A doesn't like SAGE...and honestly that's two fish in a rather large sea, as far as I'm concerned. There's always more options.

Ah well, at least we're not rushing into this. Been down that road before. This time the wife and I are preparing for everything - we've even been eating as if we're on the road already for the past month. Very little cold storage items, everything non-perishable that we can find and we're keeping the cost under $10 a day each. Which is a challenge when you're both allergic to gluten.

We're also selling off all our excess baggage, so when we come home from the road, we'll have a clean, well organized home to come back to.

 

Well, as it turns out, SAGE wanted $2,325 PER PERSON for a refresher course and is 2 weeks. C1 wanted $1,000 per person and the training is 1 week. I think we're looking at C1 as our most logical option.

I'm sincerely hoping within a couple weeks I can offer notice to my current employer and then head down for schooling at the beginning of September with the missus.