MILITARY APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS

I'm currently in School and I'm looking for some good Companies to transition into out of the military. Has any other former service members went this route and what's the process.

The process is fairly straight forward. You go to a company that has it. Sometime during orientation/training the vocation guy for the region shows up. You do paperwork and it gets submitted. First check can take over a month to come thru. Typical VA waiting periods. The check for your apprenticeship doesn't hit on the first. More towards middle end of the month. You have to fill out logs every day (on top of your normal trucking paperwork) and submit them weekly to the person at your company responsible for validating your training. Your BAH payment does not remain at 100%. It slowly decreases in 20% increments after set blocks of time.

Easy way, drive for Swift. Provide a DD-214 and the academy is free provided you stay 13 months.

Um even easier. Go to a community college for your CDL , Uncle Sam foots the entire bill, you get paid BAH while you are there, then join a company that pays tuition reimbursement and get paid the money Uncle Sam shelled out. Also with ZERO contract.

Now, which opportunity looks more appealing? Personally, I think only an idiot or someone very gullible would sign a contract for something he/she wouldn't have had to pay for in the first place. Honestly, Swift's driving academy is a ripoff for someone that has G I Bill benefits to use. If you want to drive for Swift get your CDL first, then go work for them without a contract.

For those people without benefits like the G I Bill, Swift's Driving Academy is a good way to get started without incurring the up front costs. Just for a military member not the brightest idea.

We have some great information on our wiki page:

Trucking Companies, GI Bill, And Military Veterans

Personally, I think only an idiot or someone very gullible would sign a contract for something he/she wouldn't have had to pay for in the first place

On that page I just put a link to above it says this about the GI Bill:

The Post- 9/11 GI Bill is a higher education and training benefit program for individuals who served on active duty after September 10, 2001 (active, honorably discharged, or discharged with a disability), that makes a tuition and fee payment to the school or educational institution on the recipient's behalf, or directly to the recipient, and may include a Basic Housing Allowance (BAH).

Eligibility and length of assistance: Generally, students can receive up to 36 months of benefits, and are eligible for 15 years from the last period of active duty of at least 90 consecutive days.

You can use the Post-9/11 GI Bill at colleges, universities, trade schools, and for on-the-job training, apprenticeships, and flight schools. Benefits are paid monthly, and Monthly Housing Allowance is based on the location of the school.

I think someone said in here that you only get to use that GI Bill one time and that's it, no matter what you use it for. So if you use it for trucking school, which is $4,000 or so, instead of a much more expensive degree at a university which would include housing and the like, you might be wasting that GI Bill on something worth a few thousand bucks instead of a much bigger opportunity.

I'm not sure if I understand that right or not.

Time used gets deducted from your 36 months of benefits. Hourly courses take time based of doing 40hrs per week. Whether you do 40hrs a week or not. Example. I went to barber school. I did 35 hrs a week. Took me a little over a year to get the required 1,500 clock hours. However only 10 months of time was deducted from my GI Bill.

It really truly is a poor deal Swift offers military veterans. Use a month of your benefit and sign a contract. Those benefits were earned by signing a contract for 3 years or more in the first place. I have nothing against Swift, it is just a raw deal for a vet. If they said, you can use your benefit and get no contract I would be all for it. They are getting paid in full off the top, them make a veteran sign a contract. It is just wrong on so many levels.

However only 10 months of time was deducted from my GI Bill.

Oh that's excellent. So you can indeed use it different times for different types of schooling. That's great.

It really truly is a poor deal Swift offers military veterans. Use a month of your benefit and sign a contract.

I never looked into the details of their program too much so I'm really not sure.

But interestingly enough, there are some companies that are now experimenting with having new drivers sign a contract to stay there for one year even after graduating from private school. The reason being, a ton of people go to private school so they can jump from company to company during their rookie year. They think they can "play the field" because they've heard drivers are in huge demand, there's a lot of "bad companies", and they really don't understand how this industry works.

So if a company asks you to sign a contract for a year and you tell them 'no way', they're glad to find out now instead of losing a ton of time and money and resources on your road training, just so you can jump ship as soon as things don't go your way.

I have no idea how many companies are trying this right now or if it's working or not, but it's yet another way companies are trying to lower turnover and identify drivers early in the process who are interested in sticking around for a while.

That is odd about making a new driver even with CDL sign a contract, but I see the point of it.

I will say one thing. IF Swift found a way around the apprenticeship program rules and let you claim the entire time of the contract as schooling, it may be worth it. The reason I say this is when doing Apprenticeship your housing allowance payments decrease at certain increments, but the time used off your G I Bill doesn't. The first 6 months you get 100% of the Housing allowance. Next 6 months it is 80%, next 4 is 60%, the following 4 is 40%, and the final 4 months is 20%. Really not worth doing it longer than 1 year. A 2 year program would just be a waste of benefits after the first year.

After Infinish my year long apprenticeship I will only have 6 months of benefit left. (10 months for Barber, 5 months for Nail tech, 2 months for Barber instructor, 1 month for CDL, and 1 year for apprenticeship.). Who knows maybe I will use the last 6 for heavy equipment diesel mechanic school, lol.

Thanks for the information I'm already in school my unit is paying for it. I had a misunderstanding of what the apprenticeship program was. I thought it was sort of like training with the industry to transition you into the career you plan to go into.