Comments By Reformed Squid

Wednesday Road test day and airbrake test of course. We load up head to DPS and I am elected to go first for the Air Brake test. Lets do this start knocking it out things are moving along swimmingly until oh wait its been 2 mins at 1500 rpm and my primary is still below 60 psi. Ruh roo raggy... Truck fails inspection; were told that we can try once we have another truck. We screw around for 2.5 hours before they get us another truck. All right game time we start with PTI and DOH!!! we have a side marker out truck is not road worthy FAIL. We replace the bulb and come back at 1400 new evaluator from DPS she comes out nice to meet you blah blah blah start with PTI PASS Sweet!!! Air brake test blah blah blah engine off release brakes and should not lose more than 3 psi it starts to settle out around 85psi. Boom Failed again. Now I am fuming, not at DPS I thanked them for their professionalism and so on. I talk to the instructor and he gets testy with me cussing DPS behind their backs about how his truck didn't fail blah blah blah. You are wrong sir I watched it, its coming from the supply valves behind the dash it needs a new O-ring I mean .50 cents lets do this I will fix it. Well now he talks to his supervisor and not to the owner Rod. I have had enough we get back to the range and I am done for the day regardless of time, I then head up to the office to inform them of what just happened. That this is unacceptable and that they need to have at least one truck that can pass PTI and Air brakes... I forgot to mention we tested to more trucks at the range when we got back and they both failed too. and one more truck was in the shop and the other had students out on the road so we couldn't test them.

Thursday we were supposed to test again... Negative Ghost Rider the pattern is full, so we head out to Waxahachie to learn their route for the course waste half a day doing that to find out that we are going to test in Waco on Friday; Maybe. Once again I decide its an early day.

Friday we are back with our instructor from that Friday that we first hopped in a truck, he goes over some weak areas with the weaker drivers and bif bam boom time to test I hop up first ready to do this thing chat with my evaluator very pleasant woman we start with straight and parallel knock it out then were off on the road. Aside from a few morons trying to sneak in on my right side while turning, one idiot that wanted to play chicken, and a DPS officer that was drafting off my rear end; I only had one hiccup and made the most sound judgment I could and took the hit on points after coming up to an intersection making a left turn the light turned yellow after I had passed the point of no return, I went instead of jamming the brakes and collecting a Toyota as a new hemrhoid. passed with a 94, received Top Gun from my class ready to head home.

Monday come back for our graduation I get there at 1022, at 1122 they are ready for me to sign a piece of paper and fill out 2 evals on the instructors. Then I am told no cert nor transcripts until the loan is paid in full even though I am going to get back by VA. We are just waiting on the Cert of Eligibility. I get a hat and swiche( <-- on purpose) army knife. I contact my soon to be employer let them know whats going on they contact the school figure what needs to be done blah blah blah heart ache is relieved. I am done with this school; almost. I have to be reimbursed by them once the COE comes in.

I definitely do not recommend this school, The classrom was phenominal the range that is another story There are only 2 instructors on the range worth a durn so unless you can guarantee you will have them check out TDI in Dallas I heard great things about them and saw some of their equipment at a test site and was impressed.

I am a recent grad from this school, some things have changed and it seems that they have changed for the worse with one exception.

I started off by contacting them to find out if they are approved by the VA post 9-11 program and they informed me they were; while filling out the forms to attend I spoke with one of their personnel and he informed me of how to word the class title "Commercial Drivers License Class A" Wrong! it needs to be filled out as Tractor Trailer Basic Course. Next I show up and I meet our instructor Mike; He is awesome (Ray is still there and he is funny and informative as well). We pipe through our chapters in the Texas guidebook to do all of our testing no big deal, then in week 2 we chug headlong into the JJ Keller books backed with plenty of informative videos from Youtube and the 1970's lol. Now our class was unique in the fact that we did not have many recruiters visit us, so we left on Friday to head to the range.... Now bear with me because this is where things really took a dive for the worst and began what I will know as 2 full weeks of stress and frustration.

We head out to the range and meet up with the best instructor out there Truly he really is. He has a flat on his trailer and trying to take pressure off of it to try and reseal on the bead... no joy so he risks driving to the tire shop to get it taken care of 45 mins later we make the right hand turn to the tire shop (mind you we have passed 1 sheriff and 2 DPS) we are 300 ft from the shop and Whoop Whoop, he managed to avoid the ticket thank goodness because he could have put us out of service. So tire on and off to the kiddie track to practice shifting and so forth. Rest of the day is uneventful.

Monday we come in and the backing instructor asks me if I know how to back (mind you I did have a CDL in the military and drove there) I tell him yes I do, he asks me to move the truck over to a particular spot. I perform a 45 blind side backing, he walks up to the truck and says wow that was awesome can you teach these guys how to straight and parallel park I will be right back.... Ummm sure I guess, 2.5 hours later he shows up and says great job man. To avoid a long read for the first 3 days I taught them other 2 how to straight, parallel, do their 45, 90, and 180 both sight and blind sides. Then on days 4 and 5 we went out to the kiddie track and the other 2 learned how to shift I only assisted in teaching this because one of the students did not speak english very well and I am quite clever with my drawings to describe things. Thank you NCO leadership classes.

Now Monday week 4 we are sitting at the range waiting for our instructor to show up so we can go out and terrorize the streets, he is not there neither is his truck. The backing instructor walks over and asks me if I can get started teaching the new class that showed up, and that we are going to be waiting there until the shop can fix the truck we are to be in. Ummm sure here we go again. about 1330 or so we have a truck and off to the roads and highways and negotiating space and all that jazz right... Wrong off to the kiddie track and my rear posted in the back seat.

Tuesday we are pushed to a different truck and different instructor bc our friends that does not speak english complained about not getting enough drive time??? I mean really at this point I may have had a total of 45 mins seat time. So now there are 6 students in one truck with an instructor. I managed to get 30 mins seat time, was told that I am an excellent driver and that he needs to work with the rest of them. Although I am not instructing anymore so that is a bonus!!!

I head off to orientation for them on the 9th of February. I have asked around and aside from the normal complaints that you will hear from some drivers; there was nothing but really good remarks in regard to this company. I talked to a couple of their drivers that run this dedicated Texas route and they love it, they are home most nights, never missed a weekend off, and they are still averaging 2200-2500 miles weekly. I passed up a couple opportunities with some other companies that would have paid a lot more to have this guaranteed home time. My only wish is that they did the Military apprenticeship like a lot of other companies do.