Premier Driving School

The Gels · Apr 13, 2019

Chinatown said: ↑

Don't let recruiters that come to your school talk you into signing up for a "Dollar General" account. Those stores do no have docks and it's driver unload; every day. Many drivers are fired from those jobs due to bumping into things in Dollar General parking lots; then you have problems finding a new job.
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Start contacting companies now, since you're already a student. You'll get job offers contingent on successfully graduating from school and having any required endorsements.
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Thanks for that advice and the large amount of companies. I hadn't found a single one of those and I thought my google skills were good!

Chinatown · Apr 13, 2019

The Gels said: ↑

Thanks for that advice and the large amount of companies. I hadn't found a single one of those and I thought my google skills were good!
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I don't use Google; I use Bing.

Chinatown · Apr 20, 2019

Decide where you're going to work yet?

The Gels · Apr 20, 2019

Chinatown said: ↑

Decide where you're going to work yet?
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Still looking all over. I'm still likely to go with Maverick, but I'm considering Celadon, KoldTrans, and I think it was Averitt. I have a few months to decide, but I'm following leads around and reading all the reviews I can.

Flat Earth Trucker · Apr 21, 2019

The Gels said: ↑

Still looking all over. I'm still likely to go with Maverick, but I'm considering Celadon, KoldTrans, and I think it was Averitt. I have a few months to decide, but I'm following leads around and reading all the reviews I can.
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I like Averitt of the aforementioned trucking outfits. I've yet to hear a soul raise a complaint with them.

ParisT · Apr 21, 2019

The Gels said: ↑

Monday (Day 1)
Paperwork all day, signing the loan agreement, meeting the instructors and school staff, and a cringy Sexual Harassment video. Also did the drug tests and physical that showed we could get into and out of the trailers and lift 35 pounds and what not. Then we squeezed in a video about Air Brakes in the last hour and we went back to the dorms, or hotels for those of us so fortunate.

Tuesday (Day 2)
This was the day! My first time ever being inside a Semi, much less driving one. I was very excited. Thing is, the Driving instructor my group of 10 was assigned to didn't show up that day. The schedule for the day is divided. You are either doing Pretrip/Backing Maneuvers or Driving in the morning and then you switch. Seeing as our driving instructor never showed up, I did Pretrip and Backing for both parts of the day. So I did get to drive a truck, just I never left the backing range. We only did straight backing and it was insane how many people couldn't do it. You got about 8 attempts each and the backing range consisted of lots of people standing around waiting for their turn. Pretrip is... Pretrip. You inspect your tractor and trailer to ensure everything works and it is all safe to drive. Pretty straight forward right? But no. There are 4 different instructors teaching pretrip and they teach 4 different things that you have to say for each part for the CDL Test. They finally got this straightened out later in the week, but it made the entire thing very confusing. After we cut for the day, at the hotel we create a pretrip study group and I never missed one. I kept doing pretrip until I could do it blindfold.

Wednesday (Day 3)
Guess what! Driving Instructor for my group still didn't show up. They pulled someone else to do it, so no big deal, we just have one day less practice than everyone else. So I still did the Pretrip and Backing in the morning. This time we did Offset Backing. If I thought people couldn't do straight backing, my God. Anyways, it wasn't too difficult to figure out. I actually bought a little toy tractor-trailer from the company store to give myself all the visuals I could with backing. After that, pretrip again. By Utah law, you can't use any aids when doing the pretrip portion of your CDL test, so they definitely stress its importance to you(but only the driver's side of the tractor-trailer and parts unique only to the right side because that is all they test on). Finally, after lunch, my time to drive! The driving instructor put three of us in the cab and off we drove... for about 10 minutes each. I got to drive on the interstate for about 3 minutes, so I'm a pretty solid trucker now. We got back at about 2 pm and the instructor said "Alright, you all did good, so you tomorrow." So I just went and did more pretrip until about 4pm and then went back to the hotel and did more with the study group.

Thursday (Day 4)
So, a new class came in on this day. 50 more students. This day was basically their Monday. My class went out, and again, morning we did Parallel Parking and then pretrip. Parallel parking made for some very interesting driving on the range. Mostly backing instructors blowing whistles and yelling at students as rampaging trucks galloped across the range. When it was time to drive again, after lunch, the driving instructor told us to just practice in-cab, tug test, and air brakes for our pretrip. No driving today.

Friday (Day 5)
So, today we still did pretrip and back and all that, but it was different. My class was sent to the north range, where all the test failures practice... And we no longer had instructors. We were supposed to do our final driving today before our CDL test on Monday too, but my driving instructor said he'd do it on Sunday. So yes, to this point I have driven the truck in a forward motion for a total of about 10 minutes, and the CDL test was in 3 days. This is when it all began to hit me that maybe this company doesn't look out for the best interests of its drivers. I heard that some poor guy that had just graduated and was waiting on a trainer was given a load and told to drive it somewhere to meet his trainer. They told him "You can do it!" and sent him on his way. BTW, they don't teach logs or weighing or wtf a prepass is or anything at the school. They only teach the bare minimum to get your CDL. They put everything else on the trainer, which has about 6 months of experience as I've mentioned earlier. I went home that day and began reading things on the internet.

Saturday (Day 6)
On this day you get to do as much backing or pretrip as you want. You just have to go wait in line. You can also just go screw around in the company store or the eatery all day. No one cares. I pretripped the entire day, but this is when I started looking at other companies and reevaluating the decision I'd made to join CR England. Why did I join them, when I could just go to a local school and get my CDL for free, utilizing my GI Bill, and owe a contract to no one? When I could go home every night and lay on my own bed? Would I even feel competent to drive after only 10 minutes of driving? That night I lay in bed looking up schools at home. I found one and also a company(Maverick) that I've heard nothing but good things about that hires graduates right from the school. Almost that moment I bought a bus ticket home, packed my stuff, and left.

I left before the CDL test, but I know I would have passed it. I legally would be allowed to drive a truck from Florida to Washington. Would it have been safe? Do I think what I got at CR England would have prepared me to drive a truck 10 miles on my own? And not just me, think of all the other CR England drivers out there with the exact same training.

Closing words on Premier Driving School, don't do it. If you are too poor to get into a school on your own there are companies with far better reputations than CR England. Although, if you're like me, you won't read this until you're already like 2 days away from testing... Which is actually a point I almost forgot to bring up. My CLP wasn't 15 days old yet. I was actually going to have to wait 2 days before I could legally test out.

Well, this is a very wordy first post and I hope I didn't bore the crap out of you. Also, hello, I'm new here.

If anyone has questions about anything I've written, or something that I haven't, feel free to ask me. And yes, CR England still calls me and sends me emails trying to get me to return and work for them.
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Its unfortunate that this happened in the way you expressed it. Yiu are very respectful to be considerate to not only think about the safety of yourself but also the safety of future students.
I just recently passed my CDL class A exams and have my permit to drive now.
I called a couple of schools in Iowa but was not excepted because I have only had my drivers license for five months.
Im glad I found this website too because Im learning alot from the post I read.
Appreciated you!

Chinatown · Apr 25, 2019

You working anywhere yet?

The Gels · Apr 25, 2019

Chinatown said: ↑

You working anywhere yet?
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Not yet, still have a couple months to finish this academy I'm enrolled on. Got recruiters coming in a couple weeks, including Maverick so maybe then.

Chinatown · Apr 25, 2019

You want flatbed?

The Gels · Apr 25, 2019

Chinatown said: ↑

You want flatbed?
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Open for anything. Heck, I'll haul oversized space shuttles if it is good.

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