First Day At School.

Well, I'm at the NIT doing the commercial road transport course now...

At the end I will have my Class 2 (US CDL-C), which is a prerequisite for the classes 4 (US CDL-B) and 5 (US CDL-A).

Quiet classroom day today :P

Very cool! What's the time frame for getting the various licenses?

Well since I'm over 25 I can do the theory test, get trained by a course like the one I am on, get the 2L (L for Learner) cert and a "passed the requirements for the full licence" cert and sit the full licence theory test then have my full class 2 immediately. Someone under 25 would have to hold the 2L for 6 months before going to Full class 2. Then an under 25 would need to hold each of the higher classes, (3, 4, 5) for 6 months before being able to graduate to the next up. I can just do a 3L, 4L, 5L courses, get my "meets the requirements" cert and sit the fulls immediately without having to hold the preceding class for 6 months.

Age has it's compensations.

The holdup will not be the time taken to study and pass, I could do that with a CDL school type outfit like the private outfit MasterDrive in a couple of weeks, bypassing the W T R endorsements and just getting the 2, F+OSH, DG, 4 and 5. But that would cost a lot of money out of my pocket. The place I am at now is fee free, funded by a NZ Ministry of Education system not too dissimilar to your WIA, but it only funds full time 6 month or longer employment enabling courses, so the course is padded out with assorted things like English comprehension credits, maximum times for slow learners quoted as expected times, etc, etc...

Officially it quoted as a "40 week" full academic year course... most people apparently finish it in 5 weeks or so if the numbers are right. They only do the outside experience and workplace off-site training when there are enough in the class to make it worthwhile, while waiting for enough to enrol the rest of us are doing the in-class theory and fluff work. :P