Advice on SAGE Truck Driving School in Texas

Check out Goodwill aka North Texas Institute in Ft Worth. Although it's not on one, you don't graduate until the instructor is satisfied with your driving/backing. It's actually helpful to ride with other students. Everyone makes different mistakes. :0)
Take care
Mary

 

I checked out the Sage school in Denver and was generally impressed. I know that the Denver school isn't the Texas school (don't even know if they operate the same way) so please don't consider this an endorsement of Sage (note "wannabee" to the left of this post).

Several suggestions:
Look in the "Questions from New Drivers," forum here, make sure you have a relatively decent employment history, good MVR (no DUIs/DWAI's), "clean" background in respect to felonies or misdemeanors.

Look at carrier websites, contact their recruiters via email or phone (some companies even have online chat), ask about schools they might define as "approved" in your area, if they reimburse for your own schooling (rather than carrier-sponsored schooling) and so on.

Some schools have financing programs available if coming up with $5K up front is a challenge. Shop around for the best interest rate/term for a student loan. There are some grant monies available if you're unemployed-check with your state job center to see if you might be eligible for that kind of money.

Some carriers have their own schools they own/operate or work with. If you get with one of those, you probably will be contractually obligated to work for them for a year (or more) to pay off the schooling by way of flat payroll deduction or lower CPM pay rate; if you quit or get fired within that time frame, you will probably be liable for the full cost of training that they provided you.

I won't tell you what carriers and carrier-sponsored training programs you should walk...er.. run from (plenty of information on this forum about those). I will suggest that you stay away from ANY program that pushes you into a Lease/Own program with zero experience in the industry; the money looks good but usually isn't as good as the L/O programs imply for new drivers. After a year or so, then you can make an informed decision about L/O.

Finally, remember that most schools teach you only enough to get your CDL.

Good luck and feel free to post your experiences here.

 

I went through sage in Montana. Excellent course, and worth the money. I can't say which one is better, nobody truly can unless they go to multiple schools, but look for a PTDI accredited course.

Also, I ended up working for a company that has its own school when I first started. I drove circles around their graduates.

Sage gets two thumbs up from me.

The most important thing you can do is to STAY AWAY from C.R. England, and be very leery of ALL mega fleets.

 

Sage graduates truck drivers. They are ok. A community college program would also work if you can swing it. And community college has a wide variety of programs to choose from. You never know, you might find yourself on the other side of the instructors desk someday.