Don't Depend on Wilson Logistic to learn how to drive

I couldnt afford to go into student loan debt to pay for a trucking school, so after getting a CDL permit and DOT cert in 2004 i went to Wilson Logistics to learn how to pre trip and learn how to drive.

I was attracted to Wilson because the recruiters told me that I would team drive with a trainer for 25k miles and then team drive with a student for 35k miles before i drive on my own.

that much turned out to be true. when i was team driving with a trainer for two weeks, preparing for the road test to earn a CDL, the trainer was so lazy that he was watching sports on his phone instead of training me. he covered his phone with a clip board so the inward facing camera didnt see it.

Other students had the same issue with their trainers. we all reported it and nothing was done. had to take my road test twice just to pass.

when i was team driving with another trainer over the road, he was a little better but barely put in any effort to teach me how to back. he would make me switch seats whenever it came time to back, dock, park, etc. only one day in an empty parkinglot did he let me practice for a couple hours.

it wasnt until i was team driving with a student i could back on my own consistantly and in the end i had to teach myself how to back. due to that i developed some bad habits and when i took the road test with us xpress i failed a 45degree backing test and had to take the test twice. the tester at us xpress took 30 minutes out of his day and taught me more about backing in those 30 minutes than the 25k miles i had with the wilson trainer.
thanks to him, many miles later i can now do 45 and 90 degree backing almost effortlessly. but the road to mastering those skills would have been a lot shorter if wilson logistics trainers were not so lazy.

ive come so far in my learning process that when i did a road test with Barr Nunn, i effortlessly passed the first attempt.

i'm not the only one. many people i knew personally had even worse experiences with trainers at Wilson. one student i met almost died because his trainer let him sleep in the top bunk while driving and the trainer fell asleep and drove into a ditch. i know several students who went through as many as 4 OTR trainers because the trainers were treating them like trash and wouldnt teach them anything.

if i had to do it all over again i would have bit the bullet and go into student loan debt to attend a good trucking school.

if you have zero experience with a tractor and trailer and are serious about wanting to learn and become a good trucker stay away from Wilson for your own safety. I got lucky and my OTR trainer, despite being a horrible trainer was an excellent driver so i didnt have to worry about dying while sleeping lol.

im not trying to trash talk Wilson Logistics, just trying to save some lives and future careers by making this post.

also to be fair to Wilson Logistics, i had a conversation with the safety firector at Wilson the week i left them because he was trying to convince me from leaving. i discovered from him that he is the new safety director and was only a safety director for a few weeks by the time i quit.

he revealed to me that the former safety director was FIRED because he was ignoring and not recording dozens of reports from students reporting the horrible training they were getting. so there's a possibility the training at wilson might be better now.

on a positive note, Wilson does do a good job teaching how to do pre trip inspections. their pre trip training is excellent but the rest of the training sucks in my experience.

 

yeah. all my loads were prime. i at least got a lot of reefer experience from them lol.

 

oh wow so i would have had a rough start either way, haha. makes sense. i was a welder for 13 years before i got into trucking and i took free classes on how to weld at a job corps in 2007. Teacher literally sat in his office all day and taught nobody. i dusted off an old welding textbook i found that nobody touched and experimented on what i read in the welding booth and taught myself. at the end of my welding career i was a robotic welder for Caterpillar until the pandemic shut the factory down.