CDL School, What's Good, What's Not

Ya, seems like it. I'll make the best of it. And my instructors are good. I shouldn't worry too much. Another of my faults....I worry a lot.

I'm attending cdl school now. a small tech school with older equipment but we get a good bit of practice both on the road and the range. We go alternate between driving and backing every day. 3 hrs a week behind the wheel ( all at once). It was also under 2000 dollars which the state paid for. I got lucky finding this school as I almost went to a private school, but like most people I have bills to pay.

My school experience was the same as Rick S. described. Can't say enough GOOD things about my tech school training, at $2500 + $100 for books! I went to school full time 5 days a week for 10 weeks, while working nights and weekends to pay bills.

Thank you everyone.

PS I forgot to add, we get about 30 minutes of driving time once a day, therefor twice in one weekend. 1 hour total approximate.

For 5 grand you better be getting more than that. My schooling was $5,500.00. We had 4 weeks in classroom and 6-8 weeks out on the range driving. Each range day was in 5 hour increments. Every day I was out on the range we practiced something. Backing skills, pre-trips whatever. But we always spent at least 2 1/2 hours out on the road daily. Since I was paying out of pocket, they considered me a "private student". Thus I was always driving 1 on 1 with an instructor. Some days we had another private student but that was the max. Myself and the other student took turns driving while out on the road.

When you pay $5000 for CDL school, what do you consider acceptable as far as how many students per truck/per trainer, how many times you get to go out to drive on the road, often times short on trainers (therefor ending up with one or two trainers having to split themselves up), students from previous classes who show up to hog the trucks because "I'm testing out tomorrow and need practice", leaving you and the other two students standing there waiting to start practicing....I mean, we paid a lot of money to attend classes, the trucks and instructors should be available to our class, no?

Our group only goes on the weekends because we all have jobs or other obligations. Going 5 days in between is already enough time that went by, sometimes it makes it a bit difficult to remember what you've learned the weekend before. There's an average of 3-4 students per truck already. We take turns.

Just curious.

My school was FT M-F - 8am-4 pm. We had 8 students in our class split in 2 trucks. I got lucky, my truck had one guy with previous experience, and he tested and passed after week 1 of driving, leaving us with tree students. So I was getting 2-3 hours a day. Doing weekends only has to be rough, with out the repetition I doubt I would feel confident about testing tomorrow.