What if I don't pass schooling for CDL?

Tech schools are very good places to get a cdl. If there's one near you, attend it.

 

As far as I know one of the trucking companies that also provides schooling for free had a condition that you must stay with the company for 1 year, otherwise must pay the tuition

 

It depends on how/why you fail the school. If you just barely fail for one specific skill, you'll be given more training and re-test. If you are so far from standards they conclude they'll go bankrupt before you pass the test you will be sent home. By sent home, I mean told to leave. How you get home is your problem. Pay attention and give it your best effort. They want you to pass.

 

My father used to tell me, Mike Trucking is one of the easiest tough jobs out there. The job is mostly muscle memory. Once you master these tasks the job becomes easy. However trucking is terribly unforgiving of ignorance and mistakes. Not everybody can do it. Some people just don't have the aptitude. If this applies to anybody you will get culled out.

We kid all the time in here about flipping burgers. When I say the above I am not implying a person is stupid. I'm just saying Trucking is not for everybody.

I council the OP to bear down and get through the training. However the answer to the OPs question is simple. If you don't get this you move on to something else. It sucks. One of the primary reasons it sucks is Trucking has become that fall back on job. They even made a joke about this in the movie Top Gun. (remember)?



As long as folks have this attitude about Trucking this is going to happen. Well trucking IS NOT that fall back on job. Not everybody can do it.

 

I went the company paid way. It's ok. But I went to the school with a guy who had gotten the state unemployment office to pay for his school, check with yours and see if it's an option, sounded like a pretty sweet deal.

 

That's a good way. I went to the career center and took the necessary classes to get a grant to go to school. It'll take about a month before you're approved but they want you to do some leg work and research. That way, you can also make sure it's the right career path for you. You'll do the classes, leg work, and research, then it's approval.

 

Some schools let you come back until you pass or they WILL pass you. But the big companies will have you sign a contract. Read it with time they vary and yes you may have to pay for it, BUT. Unless you have some real issues regarding your deductive reasoning, you should not be worried. It somewhat difficult and you may not pass one exam or the other but its completely doable. Go for it.

 

Moose, I thought that it is an easy thing to learn when I started but the guy who taught me how to drive, which included driving in a blizzard and in the desert heat within a week, said that it is really easy to drive but knowing what to do when there are problems is what matters.

He also said I will see people who claim to be good drivers but they are accidents looking for a place to happen and people to kill.

Now I didn't think about this until I started interviewing people and taking them for road tests. Many of them had spotless records but when I would have them do simple things like get a truck out of a tight spot in the yard, they failed. I didn't care if they scraped a truck or busted a mirror, that's what those things are there for. A few even almost caused accidents in traffic, a couple scared the living crap out of me when we hit I94 at the I75 interchange, so close to being killed. Of course I had the usual "my daddy/grandfather/great grandfather/brother drove a truck once so I know what it is like" or the usual "I always wanted to drive a truck since I was a kid", when I hear this in an interview, it is an instant rejection.

What many don't get and a few will bash me for this is that they are drivers and that's all they are so of course they will say "come on in, the waters fine" but they don't seem to see the reality of what others skills are because they are not trying to find the right people to drive their trucks. They don't take the time to pull apart behaviors or to care that the guy/gal has a habit of pulling off the road and then pulling back into traffic or making lane changes without turn signals and cutting off a lot of cars because he/she is too stupid to slow down to let them by to pass a truck that is going 2 miles an hour slower than he/she is going.

Some other fleet owners just want meat in the seat and don't care, while others are worst than I am when it comes to testing out drivers and are really anal about drivers to the point they don't find too many that meet their requirements.

Out of all of that babble, there is one thing that is important for newbies and some veterans alike to understand - not everyone should be driving, just because you passed a crackerjack written and road test, driving for a few years, it is your bad habits, your lack of skills and you treating it as just a job or a last resort should stop you from driving a truck altogether and it all comes out when you go look for work.