Are There Any Trucking Schools That Aren't a Joke?!

When I think about my truck driver training program that I graduated from in 2017, I remember that it was run almost like a "good ol' boys" club. The instructors would tell you gruffly, "grab a gear (insert student's last name)!" instead of acting like a civil human being and calmly instructing someone as to how to "grab" the proverbial "gear." They also freely chastised students and teased people. Yeah yeah. So what? Big deal, right? Suck it up, buttercup. Maybe they were just trying to get us ready to deal with all the cranky A-holes out there at the truck stops, shippers, consignees, etc.

What I did have a major problem with was the following:
The course was advertised as a 160 hour training. It was a course run under the umbrella of the local community college, and was highly regarded. Turns out that that 160 hours was total B.S. The days out on the range were primarily standing outside in the cold in the parking lot waiting for my turn. On an eight-hour day I wouldn't even receive two hours of wheel time.

Fast forward to the present day, and I'm looking for some options for my wife to get her cdl. I've been reading google reviews of various truck driver training schools in California (where I'm originally from) and Tennessee (where I'm currently domiciled), and I keep coming across the same comments saying the same thing, that 75 percent or more of the course is spent waiting your turn. How useless. Why do companies demand that you go to a 160-hour or 200-hour school when most (maybe all?) of those places are just padded with wait times and fluff vs. actual wheel time.

Can't a reputable trucking company accept a grad that went through a program that was only say 50 hours if those 50 hours were utilized efficiently?

Here's how it could work:

-Lectures and whatnot can be recorded and accessed online via a private link similar to the way trucking companies make their drivers watch safety videos every month out on the road. No sense in spending thousands of dollars just to sit in a classroom nowadays.

-Likewise, show up on day 1 with your permit already in hand. Why pay for something you can teach yourself?

-Focus purely on the hands-on pre-trip, skills and driving. Without making students wait.

-Okay now as of 2022 I guess there's a mandated X number of hours of "ELDT" training. But everything else should be practical.

-Use full-size sleeper trucks and dual-axle 53' trailers. You know, the equipment most are actually going to drive otr. No single-axle trailer and single-axle daycab B.S. And the worst blasphemy of them all: Pup trailers!? Forgedaboudit! How is that even legal at some places? All those smaller setups are just going to make it harder when you actually go to work in a full-size rig.

-This one's a little bit more personal: Get some automatic trucks!
Make manual training optional for an extra fee. For example, I don't want my wife to waste time struggling with shifting or risking expensive failures at the dmv due to shifting errors. Our intention is to just work for a company that runs automatics. I don't have the automatic restriction on my cdl, but I've worked at three different otr companies and none of them even had a single manual truck in their entire fleets.

Fleets have dumped manuals, get over it. Yet it's the default at trucking schools as if we're still in the 1990s. Ten speeds? How many of the actual sectors of modern trucking that still have manual trucks are using primarily ten speeds? If you're hauling crude trains or hopper trains out west, chances are you're running an 18 speed. I've never even heard of a cdl school that has vehicles with 18 speeds or 13s... They all seem to be in love with those ten speeds.

Anyway, I don't want to debate transmissions here. The fact of the matter is that most drivers fresh out of cdl school will never get behind the wheel of a manual truck. So just make it an extra add-on. And offer training beyond the stupid ten speeds. Furthermore, students getting bamboozled about shifting detracts from their attention to more important aspects of the drive like seeing if their trailer is in the other lane or out on the shoulder. I guess these schools figure it's some sort of initiation ritual for the inevitable engine cut out from 5th to 6th when the student forgets about the splitter. Yeah that just screams efficiency. Right How about the trucking school charging you another $1000 for the 3rd attempt at the dmv (I came across that one in my research), because you failed the last attempt due to the splitter error or another error like taking off in 2nd gear. Or maybe the student misses an important road sign or light change, because they were so worried about shifting smoothly after only having 10 hours of total lifetime truck driving experience, since most of their past month was spent waiting instead of driving. I've done my risk vs. reward analysis on that topic. Not worth it for my wife to test in a manual.

Bottom line:
You shouldn't have to spend a month of your life to accomplish something that, if designed properly, could be accomplished in one week.

How do trucking companies determine if one school is good and another is not up to par? Is this something objective? Are they just looking at that arbitrary "160" number? Are palms being greased? What if I do 40 hours of private training somewhere? How is that worse than the 160 hours of 80-90% fluff somewhere else?

 

That's where I went and it sucked. About 25 students to three trucks.

 

Sounds like you did it right. What school was that?

 

Some companies want to see more than a cdl in hand.