KllM driving academy ??

Has anyone been to the KLLM driving academy in Lancaster tx. Looking for a CDL school.. wanted to know if it's worth going there? Or paying out of pocket at a community college.

 

@TravR1

 

I had a friend that taught there a few years ago when ffe owned it ... think it's still a real good school I believe kllm bought ffe so they could get the school so I don't think they would have changed it .... I was leased onto ffe for 6 years and kllm screwed things up for the owner ops so I can't really say anything good about them ... but maybe company drivers have it ok you will have to talk to them but the school was top notch and I don't think that would change

 

I think KLLM wanted what FFE possessed in terms of Reefer assets and lanes and so on. FFE was no slouch in my time. I think we were about 1200 trucks divided between national and LTL combined with 5 other fleets in the same corporate family ranging from computer chips to swinging beef onwards to god knows what else.

I cannot speak to KLLM because I remember them as a competition on the east coast going into the produce and grocery warehouses decades ago.

I will say that FFE did in my time a pretty decent amount of training and so on. It's not perfect and stands as one of the companies that we were fairly successful with for a while. You have to take the good with the bad like any company and if you happened to find your path, roll with it. Not too many would be that lucky in life as we were.

 

Funny you mention this. I was looking at the FFE website yesterday and noticed the KLLM logo on their, I think it was for their training academy but the logo threw me off.

 

ffe was a good company I was there in the 80's and was there 2008 till 2014 the last 4 on the ltl side kllm wanted us owner operators to take there contract which ment a 30 % pay cut I don't think anybody did , then they figured out how to screw us through the ffe contract ..... from what I've seen of kllm they are taking the training company buisness plan which means train and pay cheap wages and lease and fleece to anyone who will take a truck . anytime after a company buyout there are Goin to be some changes and the people who are effected by these changes will have a dim view of the new owners. but the ffe academy was one of the best around and I don't think kllm would want to screw it up actually I believe that they started there own school in Jackson based on the ffe school. I would definitely try to get on the ltl side if you can that's still running under ffe . every one I knew that worked for ffe truckload got new jobs

 

if your from Houston they have a drop lot and mini terminal down there

 

Yes I live in houston . But looked on internet and YouTube. And seen CDL training schools . And KLLM had a 18 day school.. I called a Recruiter for them. It's a one year contract with no out of pocket cost for school

I just had a bad experience at a CDL school. I just want to make sure I get my CDL this time around. If I go to KLLM school..

 

Well i have only been to that one school, really nothing else to compare it too, but I had a good time there.

Couple words of advice...

Ignore the rumors among students. A lot of them think they know everything, but the rumors that get spread about the two companies and the divisions are almost always completely wrong.

Keep a healthy distance between you and the other students. Most of them wont finish. Just be there for the trucks. I would wake up in the middle of the night in my dorm and I'd hear all kinds of stuff going on.. People sneaking around. By the end of the first week half the class was gone. Just dont get swept up in that.

Do all of your homework. They check it every day. If they tell you to write out the pretip brake test 10 times, do it. They will collect it the next day, and those that dont get sent to the boss lady's office.

Decide what you want to do and stick with it. During orientation they will talk up the places they need drivers the most. It was really confusing. They try to get the FFE people to swing over to KLLM. They will say you might have to wait for a trainer and the better divisions have waiting lists. I dug in for FFE. Had my trainer in two days. Once I upgraded those waiting lists disappeared. Lol

Once you get past your training and upgrade you move over to your division and meet your dispatcher and everything clears up and gets easier and less confusing.

So keep your eye on what you want, ignore student gossip completely and you'll land where you want and it wont be so bad. It will probably be great. The students don't know anything.

If you want straight OTR and driving a lot to different places hauling different kinds of freight, go KLLM. If you like stability, driving to terminals, and established routes hauling food, go FFE.

If you team I think you will make the most money with FFE. And if you arent allergic to touching freight their plasma division is awesome.

Hope this helps.

 

Driving “Academy”.. I luv it.