alliance tractor trailer..who them???..lol

I went to Alliance back in the mid-90s. It was WAY too expensive for what I got. Just how hard it is to learn how to drive a truck? Not hard, which is something I didn't know when I forked over about 5,000 bones for 5 weeks of training. And it gets better....I was out of work for those 5 weeks of training, along with 2 more weeks of orientation/waiting on a trainer at Swift. Yeap, my first company was SwiftQuit, an outfit pushed hard by Alliance. Hey, I was greener than green. It wasn't long after going to work and I was bluer than blue. Four months after starting at the POS outfit known as Swift, I was out of work and 5,000 poorer. I had a nice diploma to look at, though. Too bad that piece of paper wasn't made out of gold. I could have melted it down and sold it to get that 5,000 back. It SHOULD have been made out of gold, as expensive as training was there. I hear now it's hitting 7,000. Ridiculous.

If you go to this mill, or any other training mill that costs more than about 1,000 in tuition, be sure to get a grant to pay for it. Don't even think of paying for it out of your own pocket.

 

They all will if you just get a grant. Grants are what have driven the cost up to sky-high levels at schools. Don't play a fool and fork over whatever they want at a school. Be a tightwad when it comes to truck driver training.

Get the grant. Check at your employment office or even a local community college. Keep that tuition in your pocket. Make the government pay for your training, just as it has in about 10 billion cases in the past.

 

Make the calls. Hopefully you'll nail down a Pell grant or something similar.

I know some states will help pay for retraining, so check into that as well. You'll need to do an interview, and they'll want to see your bank information and maybe tax returns from last year.

If I were going back to square one and were taking training all over again, I would get the training free or I'd pay no more than about 500 out of my own pocket for it. There is no way I'd fall into the training school racket and pay big money for some ######## training that's worth about 500 in the end. If I couldn't get a grant or a good price on training, I wouldn't go. Simple as that.

You don't learn that much at a training school anyway. You'll learn most of what you need to know on the road with a trainer. The reason you must go with a trainer for a few weeks is because you don't learn much at a mill. A mill is just a hoop you have to jump through. Some of us know it's part of a fleecing racket (which is ANOTHER reason to go cheap), but that's a different post. If there WERE a real driver shortage (this is a lie--there isn't), trucking companies would be offering to train you themselves for a low cost or even free. But then they wouldn't be raking in money from the training racket.

Get the grant. Keep that money in your pocket where it belongs.

 

I'm telling you, CNC, there are programs out there that cost less than a grand. You don't HAVE to pay big coin for training. You just have to dig for them. When I went to my first company, the first day on the job I ran into guys who had paid only 500 for training. Within minutes I became both ashamed and extremely pissed off, as a lightning bolt hit me that told me I had been fleeced. This is because I paid 5 THOUSAND for training, which is about 10 times more than I should have paid. And consider this--while I was at training, I was out of work, meaning I lost that income. I paid, when I count this opportunity (lost income) cost, probably 10 grand for a CDL. And those other guys I met? They could drive as well as I could, and we were all standing at the same threshold--we had jobs and were going out with trainers to learn how to drive. Live and learn, and blog, boy, blog.

Check Crete. They used to offer a training program in Lincoln at a community college with reasonable rates, even for those who are out-of-state. They may still do. All you'd have to do is pay your living costs while there, which should be reasonable. Rent an apartment for two months at 300 a month, and you'll be set. You may even be able to crash in a fairly good hotel for 300 a month in Lincoln. Some will give you a good monthly deal.

 

Maverick will ask you to stay with them for 6 months and if you don't you only pay $1,500 for the school at ASU with housing. If you go to ASU on your own then it will cost you $1,700 with housing. So it is a great deal in my opinion.