Western Pacific Truck School - The Road To Failure

So I posted this once before and it quickly digressed into a poo flinging competition. Let me preemptively address some of the haters. 1. According to the instructors at WPTS, I was not a poor student, and I did well. 2. I do not believe that WPTS takes the full blame for my failure. Some students do pass, but there are far better schools, and far cheaper schools.

3. Their exam passage rate for 2014 was 55% http://wptruckschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/spfs-stockton-class-a-cdl.pdf There are schools with an exam passage rate of 98%+

4. I, "graduated" from the school so I am included in the graduation statistic.

5. Ironically, I might even be included in the placement rate statistic since they got me pre employed with SWIFT, against my wishes

6. I am not looking for people to tell me that I do not have a chance in the industry, etc. It is not constructive, and it's called taking a **** on my thread. If you want to hate on me, go do it elsewhere. This is for new truck drivers such as myself - I wish someone posted this for me before I went.

7. I am now going to a different school. I do not have an opinion on it yet.

I started my journey down their road after visiting the campus in Stockton. I spoke with a woman named Cynthia, who informed me that I may be able to get the school paid for entirely with a grant. I was delighted to hear such news. She also had me sign a form claiming I had been given a tour of the campus – I hadn’t, but what did I care? I soon learned that signing for things that didn’t really happen was commonplace with the school, but it’s mostly done with the students not realizing what they are signing for. I followed up on the call to the woman I was referred to. After answering questions, meeting in person, taking tests, and filling out paperwork, I was golden. My way was paid for. I was given the option of going to some other schools, but I felt I should be loyal to the school that informed me of my good fortune.

Then came orientation. My first annoyance was noting that Cynthia was being extremely stingy over items of very little value. She was verbose about only those that had already paid for the program being able to sit down in front of a few dollars’ worth of supplies. We sat down and listened to the school’s job placement woman for a while, were given a bunch of phone numbers to call, and went through endless amounts of inane paperwork to sign. In came the school’s manager - I didn’t like him from the start. He comes across as very smug, and never misses a chance to be annoyingly glib. He looks a lot like Santa clause sans the outfit. The first thing he did was try to open the file cabinet by, “picking” the lock with a paper clip. He just shoved it in the keyhole and twisted it around wildly, and then asked if anyone in the room knew how to pick locks. Clearly he didn’t, he wasn’t even using anything as a tensioner, nor seeming to have a clue about pins. He then informed us he was a rebel. Mr. Rebel continued to inform us of the school’s rules, which reminded me of being in grade school again. Further, we were agreeing to random drug testing as if we were criminals. We filled out paperwork, listened to him mock a few students, were informed of how great a decision we had made, and went on our way. Not everything he said about what a great decision we had made was even true. Our classroom was a rotting mobile trailer with a ceiling that looked like it was going to fall in on us. I left fuming feeling I had certainly made a mistake.

I called up the school the next day to see if Bryan would be my instructor because I was going to quit right then and there if he was. I was relieved to find out he wasn’t. My classroom instructor was Ken. I liked him. He was easy going, informative, full of wisdom, and didn’t ride my butt for breaking inane rules. I do believe that the classroom aspect was a waste of time and money because we could all read the handbook and study it on our own, but Ken made it as palatable as possible. We spent a week on studying the CDL handbook, and just barely skimmed over the hazmat section on the last day. Off we went to take the permit tests… it was a breeze. If you want to pass the written tests, all you have to do is read the handbook, take a few online sample tests, and if you did well, you’re going to pass – just make sure to thoroughly investigate every question you got wrong until you understand why perfectly. I passed one the sample tests before I even studied just guessing to see what it was all about. Make sure to get all your endorsements because it’s very simple and opens a lot of doors. Further, just passing isn’t good enough. Know that handbook by heart because this is what we’re choosing to do with our lives, and mediocre isn’t good enough. Also, get your TSA background check started as soon as you can. We were all instructed to do it after the permit test on the day of orientation, but that was when we were being bombarded with new information, and it was only briefly touched by Cynthia in her fast paced flailing ways. Out of the others I trained with, I was the only one that remembered to do it.

Next up was the crucial aspect of it all, learning our skills. I chose the late night four hour time slot because I wanted to insure I’d get the smallest class size. Out of respect for my instructor, I will not share his name. I had a hard time understanding him due to his strong accent, but I must admit that the other two in my group did not. I guess I’m not around Spanish speakers often so I had not acclimated to it as those that live in the area have. We started out learning to straight line back - it was harder than I expected, but I was alright at it. The guy that couldn’t straight line back to save his life was hogging the majority of the time, while my other classmate and stood around watching. I felt this was unfair because I needed practice too. This theme persisted throughout my training as the worst of us drug cones around – to my great amusement, I’ve seen up to 4 cones dragging around with him with one cone stuck between the tandems flopping around as the wheel turned, and the tractor bouncing about as he ground gears. Once the guy got angry, no cone was safe. I went into the office pretty early on complaining about getting less time, and wanting more, but the lady was snippy with me, informed me that it wasn’t true, and that I would not be able to get extra time. The guy that was better than I was got even less time behind the wheel.

Our skills training was extremely monotonous. I watched others practice the majority of the time, and when it was my turn, I still sat around stuck in first gear anytime I pulled forward because that is the school’s rule. So I practiced my skills less than 1/3 of the time, and 1/2 of that time was spent crawling forward. It is probably safe to expect about 1/6 of your 4 hours actually practicing backing. I started to complain about this as well, and we did end up with another truck or two to practice in at times. I’m pretty sure this had nothing to do with my complaining because the school was consistent at proving to me that they did not care what I had to say. They might talk like they have your back, but they really don’t. Talk is cheap, actual training is not, and they’re in it to make money.

Another big issue for me was that I couldn’t see the cones since we were training in the dark. It was very frustrating because many times I’d not see any cones or the wrong cones, etc. I complained about it continuously. There are some lights on in the campus, but not enough to light the whole area up, and sometimes all you get is a light in your mirror making it impossible to see anything else. It got to the point where I was bringing in my own power source and light, but it wasn’t really helping either. The cones weren’t lighted, and it was simply a frustrating nightmare. An experienced driver that was a graduate of the school showed up on the very last night, and was showing off a bit. I noticed that he had his four way flashers going and asked why. It was so he could see the cones reflecting with the flash. So all that time I was training and complaining about not being able to see, my trainer couldn’t tell me to turn on the four way flashers? I like the guy, but I felt like a dope for not even realizing to try it myself, and he couldn’t have suggested it? Anyway, if you make the mistake of going to the school, don’t also make the mistake of training at night. It’s a night-mare.

As I’ve said before, I have a lot of respect for my trainer, but he really was not for me. I had trouble understanding his strong accent, and I think he didn’t want to be training at night because he wasn’t doing a very good job. I watched him training guys during the day, and he was an entirely different person. I wouldn’t be surprised if the school’s management forced it on him. That said, I feel I was misled by him in many ways. He taught us to do various backing skills by using the struts on the trailer as a visual cue. During the DMV test I was given a different trailer with different struts, which has a lot to do with why I failed one of my skills tests. Then again, I feel it takes a great deal of incompetence on the management to not realize things like this and provide the consistency required. The trainers and the management are not really on the same page often. Another way I failed at the DMV was on the airbrake test doing the governor cut in. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but it would require too much time explain, and this is already getting long winded. Read the CDL handbook airbrake section to understand. I did it at the DMV the same way I did it in front of my trainer and passed every time. However, my DMV examiner wanted me to wait longer between pressing the brake for cut-in. The CDL handbook does not actually specify a duration of time required, and the brakes passed the test so I think my examiner was needlessly picky. I argued my point as best I could, but you can’t really win at the DMV. When I told other trainers about it, they told me that it was known the DMV examiners were like that, yet my trainer passed me doing the same thing every time. On the subject of the examiners, don’t let them rush you or tell you to skip over things because they do and then they persecute you for it. Be detailed, reiterate yourself on everything during the pre-trip because they told me to skip sections and then marked me down for doing so. I still passed the pre-trip, but not with the near perfect score I should have. Bore them. It’s your future, not theirs.

One of the scariest ways I feel I was misled on was doing right turns. As the handbook explains, you’re not supposed to swing out first because it puts a gap between your trailer and the curb, which invites a car behind you to try to squeeze in. Instead, you’re supposed to swing out as you complete the turn so your trailer doesn’t offtrack into the curb. However, in the real world, you can’t always swing out into oncoming traffic, and there is a compromise, which my trainer actually thwarted me for doing naturally. It wasn’t until I was with another trainer that I found out my natural instinct was right. As you approach the turn, you want to swing into the curb and then away as you’re making the turn, and then swing out as you finish as much as necessary without hitting a car. Basically, you’re making an S. When I was put into traffic during the day with a lot of traffic doing a hard right turn, I did the turn as my trainer had expected, and I very nearly hit a car. The surrogate trainer I was with at the time explained what I should have done – what I wanted to do before my trainer stopped me. He made me aware of many things I was doing wrong that my trainer had either had me do or never informed me was wrong. I asked management for him many times, and even though they told me explicitly that they would give me more time with him, I never got it. Since I have nothing but good things to say about him, his name is Able. He’s sharp, annoyingly exact and disgustingly obsessed with safety. He’ll mock you, he’ll ride your ass and make you completely aware of your incompetence – he’ll make you a good driver. I could continue with examples, but I would end up writing a book.

My biggest beef is with management. Between my DMV exam failures, I was given very little time for extra training. They pretend that they keep training you until you pass, but for me it was more that any training I got was with a DMV examiner during my driving exam. The management insisted that I was a good driver despite the fact that one DMV examiner explicitly told me to tell the manager of the school, Bryan, that I needed more training. I told him, he did not care. The examiner also told me that the last person she tested from my school also complained about not getting enough training. One of the most infuriating things that happened to me twice was that the Bryan scheduled time for me to come in to practice, and then when I got there at the scheduled, there was no truck and no trainer to train me. Another one of the times I showed up as he scheduled, he acted like I was trying to pull one over on him. It is a long drive for me to get there, and it costs me time and gas money to get there each time. Further, the office has you sign in when you arrive, and then they tried to use my initials as proof that I got training to the woman that arranged my funding. Very dishonest.

Even worse, I was given a truck I’d never driven before on my third and final driving test, and was denied my request for the truck I was once decent at driving. I’m not sure if this was passive aggressive, incompetence or both, but it pretty unforgivable to take their student’s future so lightly. Between driving tests, you have to wait literally months before you can schedule a new one - all this time money isn’t coming in, and your driving skills rust further. I just recently requested more funding for a different trucking school since I am an incompetent truck driver, and the job training management spoke with the school’s management. I’m unclear on all of the details of their interactions, but I do know the school told the training management that they had tried to call me many times recently. It’s a complete and utter lie, which I can and would love to prove with my phone records. It has been a while since I’ve come to any of the school’s management with my grievances because it’s very unlikely to turn out good for either of us. I just simply want nothing to do with them.

It is my firm belief that the management is dishonest, and the whole school is run very poorly, but do feel free to look into the objective measures in the annual reports linked to at the start. The passage rate for this year is probably going to be even lower than last year.

Good luck! If you'd like suggestions of other schools in the area I've looked into already, feel free to contact me.

Back again, are you? For someone who likes to call other people "idiots" and "drooling retards" you sure have a hard time taking a hint.

So I posted this once before and it quickly digressed into a poo flinging competition.

As I recall you were the only one flinging anything.

I am not looking for people to tell me that I do not have a chance in the industry, etc. It is not constructive, and it's called taking a **** on my thread. If you want to hate on me, go do it elsewhere.

Except that you can't very well tell anyone to go elsewhere, as you don't own this site. People are allowed to comment on what you post. No one was hating on you, you just had a tantrum when people said things you didn't want to hear.

Further, we were agreeing to random drug testing as if we were criminals.

This right here shows how completely clueless you were about what you were getting into and how you totally misinterpreted most of the things that were going on. You were already sitting in a classroom when you first discovered that drug tests were a normal part of the trucking industry? And then you took it as an insult that they would do that to you? Come on, man.

Even worse, I was given a truck I’d never driven before on my third and final driving test, and was denied my request for the truck I was once decent at driving. I’m not sure if this was passive aggressive, incompetence or both, but it pretty unforgivable to take their student’s future so lightly.

Another great example of total cluelessness. Tell me Ryan, after you get your CDL and go to your first company are they going to give you the truck you want? Are they going to let you drive the truck you trained in at school because you're comfortable with it? When the truck you're comfortable with hits 500,000 miles and they reassign you a different truck because they want to trade that one in are you going to come back here and blast the company's management for it? Is that also going to be considered passive/aggressiveness or incompetence on the part of management?

There are schools with an exam passage rate of 98%+

If you're so d*mn smart then why didn't you pick one of those schools instead? Is that passive/aggressive behavior on your part or just incompetence?

Can you point us to any resources that show a school with a 98% passing rate on the DMV exams?

I'm sorry, Ryan, but you're a complete mess. Maybe that school is terrible, maybe they're great, I don't know. But what I do know is that you are completely incapable of getting along with people so you're not the one to make that decision for others I'm afraid. You're going to have this same problem at every school you attend and every company you work for.

In this industry a rookie has to figure out two things in a big hurry or his time in this industry will be very short lived:

1) Shut up, listen, and learn.

2) Have a great attitude and get along well with people

You showed up with a rigid set of expectations and yet you were completely ignorant about how things are done in this industry. You didn't even know that drug tests were required! If something so simple and obvious completely eluded you AND you took it as an insult when it was revealed then you most certainly did that with a long list of things that are considered normal routines in this business - like having you take the test in a different truck. Helloooooooo! You're not going to drive the same truck your whole life!

The fact that things weren't done the way you expected them to be done only speaks to how little you knew about the industry you were trying to make a start in, not how incompetent the school or instructors were that were wasting their time trying to help you. And the fact that you even had a rigid set of expectations about how things should be done in an industry you have no experience in demonstrates how arrogant you are. You know nothing, you've accomplished nothing, and yet everyone with experience in this industry is an incompetent piece of sh*t in your eyes.

Like I said, maybe that school really is terrible. I really don't know. But what I do know is that you're going to hate every school, every driver, every instructor, and every company you work for because that's the pattern you've established already.

Ryan, I drove for 15 years and I've been mentoring people for eight more. I can tell you from almost a quarter century of experience that you are your own worst enemy. You're always going to be miserable and you're always going to be surrounded by people that want to see you fail because they can't stand your arrogance. I've watched what's happening to you happen to literally hundreds if not thousands of people at this point. It's always the same patterns. People that are arrogant enough to think they know how things should be done in an industry they have no experience in never learn anything because they think they already know it all.

And I've got news for you. You had the same amount of training, if not more, than the other students in your class and plenty of them graduated and have been running solo for quite some time now while you're still trying to get your CDL almost a year later. I don't know what makes you think you're all that, but your results are far below average. I think it's time to have an honest look in the mirror and ask yourself why it is you're really failing when others in your circumstances are succeeding. Maybe you're not smart enough and talented enough to sh*t on everyone you meet and still be successful. Maybe you should humble yourself and wake up to the fact that maybe you are the only one that's to blame for your failures.

And let me say something one more time to give you something to think about - if you act like an arrogant jerk a lot of people are going to go out of their way to make sure you fail. How do you know the school didn't purposely set you up for failure? You don't know the private conversations that were going on between all of the people at the school you made enemies with and the people who were doing the CDL testing. It's possible they were going to make sure you failed. Interesting thought, isn't it?

Attitude Ryan, attitude is everything. It will either make you or break you. You are a victim, you put yourself there so you avoid taking responsibility for your mistakes and failures, always someone else's fault.

But don't take my advice because I am a pea-brained, clue-less Swift driver. Right?

You may eventually get you CDL but make no mistake your approach to people will not get you very far in this business. No one will care to help you and trust me you will need it, especially in the beginning.

No one will care to help you and trust me you will need it, especially in the beginning.

That should already be evident from the results so far. And this is the easy part! The schooling is nothing. Wait til you're in Downtown Chicago during Friday rush hour in a thunderstorm or trying to ease 78,000 pounds down an 11 mile long mountain grade in the Rockies in mid-January at night on snow-covered roads when you can only see 100 feet in front of you. Sure is gonna be nice to have someone there making sure you don't kill yourself, ya know?

Attitude is everything.

And you'll like this G-Town.......the other thing people don't realize is that truckers are at the mercy of everyone they come across. Everyone from four wheelers on the highway to traffic police, DOT officers, dispatchers, load planners, safety officers, shipping clerks, dock workers, waitresses and cooks, and fuel island attendants. Wait until Ryan gets out there and starts telling everyone just how stupid and incompetent he thinks they are. That dude is gonna sit around on his *ss doing nothing more often than a kangaroo without legs! He's gonna get traffic tickets, fail DOT inspections, sit in parking lots for hours waiting to load and unload, get his food spit on, get the fewest miles of anyone on his dispatcher's board, and get home late every single time.

I've seen it a million times. It's so predictable it's not even interesting anymore to wonder how things are going to turn out.

Wait until Ryan gets out there and starts telling everyone just how stupid and incompetent he thinks they are. That dude is gonna sit around on his *ss doing nothing more often than a kangaroo without legs! He's gonna get traffic tickets, fail DOT inspections, sit in parking lots for hours waiting to load and unload, get his food spit on, get the fewest miles of anyone on his dispatcher's board, and get home late every single time.

I would love to be a fly on the wall the first time he tells a DOT officer that he's a mouthbreathing imbecile. You can't pay for entertainment that good.