Company training or CC program?

DO NOT ATTEND SCHOOL AT A trucking COMPANY!

1) They will treat you like crap

2) You will owe them and you will have to agree to a contract in largely in their favor, some you may have stay for length of time, some you will have to work for reduced pay, and some contracts say both.

3) They will receive the tax credits and you will lose them.

If its about the money there should be a Financial Aid office at the college. Most companies hire new driver normally have a tuition reimbursement program. Some pay $500 and some even upwards of $10,000 so make you ask the recruiter about that too when you arrive at that step.

 

I went the community college route, & am really glad I did. Close to home, so I didn't have to stay at a motel far away from family & friends during those weeks. Also, a lot of companies, once you're hired on, have some sort of tuition reimbursement program.

 

I have personal experience with Prime, WYWH. I went all the way through their training program and could have been dispatched Solo but my Dad had significant health problems so I got a local job back home. When I did this, I explained the situation with my Dad, and Prime did not invoice me for not completing my Contract. They were very good about it. During the training portion, I earned $600 per week minimum, as would you, once you earned your CDL and began team driving with your Trainer. Training was long, as in four months or so! You'll have to complete 60,000 miles. At the time (5 years ago), I was credited 5000 miles of the 60k for earning my CDL, so it was 55K miles with the Trainer. It was very thorough training. You'd just need to hope you get a good Trainer who you get along with.

During the process of Orientation, or whatever they call it, before you go out on the road for about 3 weeks with your CDL Instructor, there was very little out of pocket money spent because they do put you up and pay 2 of 3 meals a day, I think it was. Not spending much money then would allow you to possibly save what you have. Though receiving cash advances during the time with the Instructor, wouldn't apply to you because you have money saved, they do loan money to those who need it during this 3 week time period, for those who choose to borrow it. This is because they are not paying you while you're driving to earn your CDL. The pay ($600 per week minimum) begins once you've earned the CDL and are teaming with the Trainer.

Once you complete your 60k, from what I know, Prime pays their company drivers better per mile than many of the large carriers. I think they're among the top notch companies and I believe you'd be pretty happy driving for them.

 

Go the CC route. Offers you much more flexability and nobody owns you.

 

I'm one that recommends going with the company training.

First, the local school training is likely to cost you upwards of $6000 (or more), and in reality all they do is get you your CDL license. You don't have any real experience to speak of; much of your time is spent sitting on a seat in the sleeper watching another student that also paid $6000 drive.

In Prime's training, you get one on one instruction. You get your license in 2-3 weeks, rather than 3-4 months. The examiners are Prime employees (and state certified), and they will NOT let you "slide" on anything.

As for the contract, it's an agreement that if you don't stay with Prime for a year, you owe them money for training. If you stay a year, you owe nothing. If you leave early, you already have a repayment schedule in place.

Before Prime changed its policy regarding training women, I was going to sign with another company and run with them for the six months required to be able to sign with Prime as an experienced driver. (Six months of school doesn't count for that.) Given that the forgiveness schedule translates into only 1.5-3 cpm, it doesn't take much of a pay boost to justify leaving.

 

Actually, of the two routes, the CC route or the company training route, I recommend you acquire your CDL via the cheapest route possible. Either way at the end of school all you will end up with if you are successful is a CDL, and all a CDL does for you as a newbie to this industry is qualify you to get a job with a training company. Hence, since company training is usually the far cheaper of the two routes, go the company training route, as a CDL acquired either way is worth exactly the same thing. All this more flexibility talk is pure utter nonsense, as either way the training will have to be paid back one way or another and since acquiring a CDL is far cheaper the company training route vs. the CC route, the company training route in my opinion is actually the better route.

I also recommend that you go to work for a training company that requires the least amount of training, cause the sooner you go solo the sooner you will start making money. Some of these training companies like to extend the training period required forever in order to exploit trainees as a cheap source of labor.

 

I got my CDL through a third-party driving school, and went to Prime for training. Despite what the others have said, community college or third party schools cannot provide adequate in-seat training time because it is too expensive. You will be just barely able to get the truck down the road once you get your CDL... they are there to get you past a road test with the state. That does not make you a truck driver.

Having done that and been on the road for a number of years now, if I had it to do over again, I'd have rather kept the money and received all of my training, including CDL instruction, at Prime.

 

I wasted $6500 with a training school and never got my CDL, yet had to pay all the $$$ for my time there. You get very little seat time, you are sitting for an hour or so between each exercise, waiting on all the other students to have their turn. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have waited until Prime could/would take on female trainees. Unfortunately, I didn't have that kind of time, or $$$ to wait around for that to happen, so I found a job in the industry instead. I'm happy here doing what I do, and I still get to work with some great drivers. A lot of people complain about the time it takes to get on their own at Prime, but I'd much rather be around a Prime truck, knowing the type of training program they have, as opposed to some of these companies that take a new CDL holder, put them in a truck for 2-3 weeks, then turn them loose on the highways, with very limited knowledge of what they are really doing.