If I get a place to practice backing should I get a CDL with no school?

Wrong answer again.

You guys gotta get this mega company mentality out of your heads.

 

Practice is part of it. Nature talent really makes the difference.

 

I went to Earl Henderson, my school tuition is $4600, after six months as a company driver they give me $1000 off that and after one year they give me another $1000 off. So $2600 paid over one year at $50 a week.
I now have a class A CDL and if I want I may go to any company I wish, I did not sign a contract for one year I signed a contract to pay for the school.
I will now go out with a trainer for two to four weeks and than get my own truck. By the end of the first year I expect to make about $30,000 to $40,000.
I think that is pretty good, in one year I can learn a trade and get paid thirty grand.
Do you really expect to back a seventy foot long eighty thousand pound truck a few times in a parking lot and than go out and make ninety thousand dollars.

 

Insurance requirements, short and simple. In order to qualify for their training you either need to have graduated from a school the company (and insurer) recognizes, OR have at least three months recent verifiable OTR experience.

I went the alternate route myself. Regained my CDL by testing in my brother's truck, then worked team OTR with him for three months. After that Swift hired me, but required I finish their entire training program.

Although I'm no longer with Swift I was a trainer for just shy of a year, and I can tell you that basically school graduates are about as green as they come. The average behind the wheel experience was 10 hours. That's 10 hours total driving on the road and practicing for skills tests. Most of my trainees doubled their total behind the wheel experience their first day or two.

You can go either way. The school will bring you up to speed on HOS rules, using an Atlas, etc. etc. that you might not pick up if you learn on your own. No matter what the REAL training begins once you are hired and get into your trainer's truck.

 

I trained with Uncle Jim. Every time I missed a gear on that set of sticks or did something stupid he'd cuff me along side the head. Now that's training at it's finest.

 

Everyone is different in how much and how they learn.

I spent about a month on the road with two friends. One friend let me drive for a week doing intermodal work around Chicago and another let me drive OTR through the midwest, southwest and west. I probably backed up to around 3 or 4 docks and practiced for a total of an hour or so in the bigger, emptier truck stop parking lots during that time.

As for backing up/parallel parking, I had already lost my initial nervousness of driving a semi when driving with my friends before I took on practicing parallel parking at the DMV course where I was going to take my test. I practiced for about 1 hour total, parallel parking approximately 15 times or so.

So the question was about simply passing the test and not really being good at backing up. I learned the points in my mirrors and landmarks to my left and right to mark the times and places where I would turn the steering wheel. This was in order to limit the variables as much as possible and leave nothing to chance.

I hit the curb on my first attempt at testing and failed. About a week later I tested again and after the road test the examiner told me that he was so impressed by how perfectly I timed the turns in parallel parking that he wanted to take pictures with his camera.

I still suck at backing up 1 year later, however that's only because I take my time and even get out and check my blind spots if needed. It doesn't help that no two docks are the same nor the amount of space you have in front of you to pull forward. Those are my excuses anyway.

In short, pay for the practice if you have to, however even better if you have some friends who are professional drivers. You may have to keep them company on the road for a week before they'll set you loose on a wide open truck stop to practice, however some people have more a surplus in time than money.

 

Imagine you have your CDL and driving an 80,000lb truck on a hilly two lane road. You pop over a hill and there is a school bus stopped in front of you and there is traffic in the oncoming lane. You can't stop. What do you do, O/P? Turn right? Turn left? Or hit the bus?

Now leave this to the O/P folks.

 

Well @Aarrons, if you answered "Hit the bus", please do the rest of the world a favor and refrain from driving anything with an engine. Just turn in your drivers license and get a bicycle.

If you answered "go left", you just killed a married couple on their way home from the grocery store. Go to CDL School.

If you answered "go right", well, there were 3 kids waiting for the doors to open on that bus that will never see the age of 10. Go to CDL School.

CDL schools are usually designed to give you a head start on experience by giving you information, skills, etc that were developed by combining decades of experience from thousands of drivers, real world scenarios, etc.

Had I not went to CDL school, I would have had to make the decision with the school bus 2 years ago in Ohio. I was on OH 229 just few miles west of US 36 when I topped a hill and saw a stopped school bus. But, I didn't have to make the decision above. I remembered what was said in CDL school and use it daily. Never out run your vision. That is to say, don't drive so fast that you can't stop in the distance you can see. I came over that hill at a speed that allowed me to stop before having to make a decision from 3 bad choices.

IMO, it's worth the time and money to go to school and learn from trillions of miles of experience, billions of hours of accident investigations and countless dollars spent on studies relating to driving. Just do your part to find a good school. There are tons out there that want nothing more than your money. But most want you to have the knowledge and ability to succeed in your career.

 

I've said it before on TTR. You never know what's around the next corner. Drive like it.

 

If you need cdl school to teach you common sense you shouldn't be in a truck. It scares me that people need someone to tell them how to handle the above situation.

Plain old drivers ed that teenagers take teaches everything youre talking about.