Is It Possible To Skip School ?

2 problems.

Minor problem : nearly every company out there requires official CDL training.

Major problem : Put yourself in the position of an O/O. You own your very own, 100,000$+ piece of hardware. You have it insured, and it is your home. Your livelihood. It is how you feed your family, and put your kids through school. Are you going to let some stranger with zero training drive your baby down the road?

 

I did it. Had a job lined up working for a farmer on his harvest crew. Long hours, low pay, but at the end of the fall I came home with some experience. After running rock for a couple of months, I landed an OTR job with a small outfit. If you can start small and work you way up it can work, but it takes time.

Some luck too, I reckon. So Good Luck!

 

I actually had a great time at the school I went to. The instructors were great extremely knowledgeable and helpful. So I would highly suggest going to a school because it really is a lot of fun learning how to drive a truck.

 

I tried the "skip school" route, not once but twice. The first time about 4yrs ago now, I could not find anyone to lend me a truck to test with. This time around it was more my fault, as I could have had my CDL, except I messed up the driving test. This comes from a guy that has driven dump trucks, and articulated off-road dumps, for the last 4 yrs. My last job was with a very small, basically family only (not mine) construction company. I done more manual labor than driving. I did drive some end-dumps. I took the job because it gave me a shot at getting a CDL. Problem arose because the owner bid jobs that he didn't get, so the people hired for those were let go. This was 2wks after messing up my test.

This time I'm going through a school, because I know I need a little more help with some backing skills, and really don't know squat about the current HOS, and probably a host of other things. For me third time's the charm. But again, it is very, very hard to find someone to lend you an expensive piece of equipment. The farmer that farms the land around where I live has an older KW Conv. Get along great with him, but guess what, will not allow me to use the rig.

 

I'm looking at school as the entry method for this industry. If I pick up some good knowledge and a few driving skills while I'm there, I figure that's a bonus.

I was working for a local landscaping company at this time last year and they were going to pay for me to get a class A. I never got the chance to do my skills test before geting laid off last spring, though.

Thing is... even if I had that class A in hand, I would have a hard time landing any work without having some real driving experience to back it up.

So I started looking around for how I was going to get some experience in a big rig. CDL school and hiring on with a company that trains drivers is pretty much it... unless you just get lucky and wander into something.

 

Theoretically it's possible to get drilled up well enough to pass the drive tests if you have somebody willing to teach you, but they'd have to be very sharp to know everything to teach you, and patient. Grandpa or somebody with lots of time on their hands would have to decide they were bored or restless enough to make you their pet project.

The schools are a lot of money but they know exactly what their doing as far as getting you good enough to get you the license, and of course you're using their equipment.