Simulation for CDL prep

NO. Focusing on the school before finding where you will work is going to put you into the pipeline of newbies that QUICKLY leave the industry long before they finish 1 year of work. The school is a formality, you need to learn what they teach. But the CDL school, ANY CDL SCHOOL only teaches you to pass the state road test. SO WHAT? Find the employer that fits what you need and only afterwards decide how to get the CDL license. CDL school is not like a mini-college experience. It's usually 3 weeks of 10-12 hour days and everything is cookie-cutter. There is not much time to learn anything but the basic skills before you test. You need to have a job lined up for the day after you finish CDL school. If not it's very easy to not have a job for months and then need to pay for a refresher course before you can get hired.

Some of you comments are you being 300% certain about a mistake some of us see you walking into. We are trying to help you not make those mistakes. 80+% of newbies quit long before they work a year in the industry. MOST of that is due to NOT FINDING the job that fits, and none of it is from picking the wrong CDL school. If the future employer has their own training program, then sign the contract and go through their sponsored CDL training. If your future employer only hires newbies from the ABC Trucking School, then only go to the ABC Trucking School. If your future employer hires newbies from ANY CDL SCHOOL WITH 160 HOURS OF TRAINING then go to whatever CDL school is most convenient for you. The goal is the job, not just a CDL. You don't do yourself any favor by thinking you can just quit your first job after a month or two if you don't like it because a newbie with almost no experience is sometimes less hire-able than a newbie with zero experience. Having that short experience signals SOMETHING WENT WRONG and trucking companies are already afraid to hire newbies. You don't know what you don't know, even if you are confident. Everyone here has years or decades of experience and are trying to help you not step on the common land-mines.

 

Training Provider Registry
https://tpr.fmcsa.dot.gov
Transportation - Training Provider Registry

 

Schools do have placement programs. They usually push whatever is easiest. We can give you company names that will hire you that the school won't even have on their short list of companies. Schools usually push Schneider and Werner, because they're the easiest, but there's plenty of others they never mention or list.

 

Here's a list of Western Dairy Transport cdl schools and terminals.
Terminals are listed at the bottom of this page. Shows 15 locations at the bottom of this page.
DRIVER ACADEMIES | WDT

 

Those are good, but the point I wish I could make clear enough for newbie to understand is YOU WORK FOR ONE EMPLOYER, not the average employer, not a group of employers. Also, after your first job, NOBODY cares about your CDL school. Many newbies pursue the "keep all my options open" strategy, which is mostly just an excuse to avoid employer research. They think that by searching for the CDL school with lots of stuff then they are getting somewhere in their job search. It depends. If the employer that best matches what you need, which allows you to stay for a year or more, and then work for better companies at the end of that year since you have a perfectly clean record, doesn't hire newbies from the school you pick you are not helping yourself.

Do the job search first. Find the companies that hire newbies from your area, with whatever background black mark you may have. Then see what their working conditions, pay, benefits, home-time, etc, etc, etc, is and when you find the company that will hire you with a CDL then you ask that company which CDL school they hire newbies from. Bingo, you are new with a certificate from the school they already recognize and you know you are in good shape for 12+ months of CDL experience.

This is NOT like high school and college where you have all the time in the world and whether you get a job at Microsoft, SpaceX, Big Company A, BC B, or BC C it makes not difference. You should do this backwards from HS or college, find the employer and then find the school. If you read this forum much you will see the number of newbies who have a fresh CDL and no job. They also didn't do the job search first. They now have a ticking clock before their fresh CDL ages enough that some employers start demanding they take a refresher course before getting hired. What I'm suggesting avoids that. You have the job lined up BEFORE you pay/borrow/sign paperwork for school. It takes time to find the employer that fits what allows you to stay in 1 company for 12 months and not break stuff. That's a hundred times more important to your future than which group of run down buildings full of former truck drivers and future truck drivers to attend. Newbies seem to think finding the CDL school is like finding a large gold nugget. It's not. It's like finding a quarter or a dollar. Find the one that makes your employer happy, not you. He has the job you want. You will learn 95% of this job with your employer, not the CDL school. CDL schools know nothing about customers and company procedures. That's what you deal with almost every day as a truck driver.

PTDI schools may be better than non-PTDI schools. What matters is what your first employer thinks about a school, not you and not other employers.