Do I even need a trucking school?

After reading about half of the posts in"Alert! Truck Driving Schools" it seems to me most of the schools around here(central florida) are scams. There are only 2 that I know of, Roadmaster in Orlando and TDI in Sanford which my wife and I started, did 1 weekend and my wifes mom got sick so we postponed till Dec.2. It will be 8 weekends of which we dont have to repeat the first. I have decided to not go back after seeing all these horror stories. We were not sure how we were gonna pay for it so the school director let us start without payment. He did get $400 out of us which I figure I wont get back. He also told us most companies will reimburse at a rate of $250 a month. The few I found that said how much they reimburse were $100 a month. Only place I heard $250 was from the TDI school director.Hmmm?BTW they charge $6000 per person+ $400 for hotel. The hotel is not refundable as far as I can tell. For my wife and myself I would be looking at almost $13000.

One thing that bugged me was he wouldnt tell me the interest rate of the student loan. He kept saying that they all varied depending on your credit score and that he didnt know it yet. However, he did know that we did not qualify for the whole loan. Only half which was $3000. The way I see it, if he knew my qualifying amount then how could he not know the % rate? And wouldnt that just be a phone call? Wouldnt Bank of America tell you the interest rate for the loan you applied for even if they would only lend you half of what you asked for? To me this is a huge red flag but we were nieve. Thanks to this forum I am getting less nieve every day.(Except how to spell that word! ) My problem is we trusted them. Being a former New Yorker I should have known better but there are times in your life when you WANT to trust people. Also times when you look at things with blinders, so to speak, because you want to see what you want to see and they seem more than willing to go along with you. My mother-in-law getting sick was a blessing in disguise because it wasnt till after we started over there that I started looking at these forums.

I cant thank all you guys and gals enough.

Leads to my original thought on this thread. I know a guy that has a T/T. Its from my former job as a residential houseing super and he was a subcontractor of mine. Its a lowboy trailer for payloader hualing. What if I got him to let me train and take the test in his truck? Im sure he would for a fee. Would I even be able to get a job without a trucking school of some kind?