Scared of going to CDL school..

USA is a good starter company. They will treat you well. The Van Buren terminal sucks. Orientation they put you in a two bed closet. They feed you cereal and fruit for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch. You are on you on for supper. The van will take you into town if you want or use the vending machine. This info is 10 years old. Don't expect a whole lots from any company you go with. They will all tell you how important you are to them while they treat you like XXit. That's the trucking way.

 

MCT has a terminal in Arkansas and they will train you. After you get your CDL they assign you to an OTR trainer for a few. Son just got hired after going to a private CDL school and they're sending their new hires to a week of advanced training, maybe because of being reefers, then will send him out with his trainer.
Good companies really do care whether you learn. They've already spent a few hundred on him in bus fares to and from orientation and advanced training and motels and staff salaries, it just makes sense for them to care about you making it.

Just take it easy and remember that everyone has gone through a learning curve. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll learn.

BTW, my son is 21, too, and is starting trucking career. He was the youngest in his orientation, too.

 

You would do best to keep with USA. Prime is a good company. Don't know anything on Central. Probably about the same. But the Refrigeration business is not good. I did it for 7 years and will never go back. Very bad customers you will be dealing with. Expect to be treated bad and set around for hours passed you appointment time. The people you deal with in grocery warehouses and meat packers could care less about you. I find in dry box most customer are more friendly and a lots of times they will unload you once you get there even if you are early. Even some times dropping what they are doing to unload you. This is not always the case. But that happening with Reefer would be rare. Hard to make much money due to all the setting around time. Expect to never know when you'll be driving, day or night. This is just my option and experience. Some people like hauling Reefer.

 

Wow, this seems a little extreme. I could maybe see a 50% failure rate, but 92% would suggest to me something isn't right with the teaching methods.

 

I took my training from C1. If you didn't pass after the 3 weeks, they would train another week at no charge. If you still don't pass it was the same the next week and so on till you did pass. You would had have the been a complete moron to fail for ever.

 

That would be Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

Out of curiosity, what would happen if a person were to fail a third test....? I ask because i know of three people out of ten from a school who are on there third....

 

It varies state to state. Some states like CA will let you take the written 3 times in one day and TN will once every 7 days but after the 3rd must wait 30 days. It's not like you are finished. You might have to wait a small time period but you can test for 20 years if you want to. Schools in general will give you 3 tries per their agreement because they use third party examiners. After 3 attempts one might start thinking maybe this isn't for me.

Road test one usually has to make an appointment and they might be backed up before you can get another.