Profile For Mathew

I will be talking about this school in this forum today:

https://floridatruckersinstitute.org/

I will start by saying this is not the school for you if you value getting your moneys worth. There are seemingly endless reasons why you should avoid this school; they are unorganized, unsafe, when I attended they had only 3 trucks, with 28 ft trailers, and these trucks were in and out of the shop.

I found them unorganized because they had no real training system in place. If a student wanted to drive, they didn't need to ask. They just hopped in a truck and ENTIRELY threw proper student rotation out the window. There were times students would just drive without an instructor around to keep an eye on, myself included.

Someone actually ended up nearly totaling another semi in the yard due to this reason (caused several hundred if not north of thousand in damages to a tractor and trailer).

I would sit for HOURS at a time doing and learning nothing due to the poor organization. They only had 3-4 trucks when I went and 2-3 instructors on duty. (Nothing against the instructors they were great). If you want to drive anything larger than a 48 (and 90% of you will) don't go here, they only have 28 fts and day cabs. I suffered greatly for it.

Instructor told me he could've got me on a 48 ft if I asked but 1. He didn't even have one in the yard and 2. He wouldn't even let me take the truck I primarily trained on to the DMV for testing without paying him.

What did I learn? 3 yard maneuvers, coupling, they EXPLAINED how to parallel, pre trips, a few road trips, and that's it. No ELDs, no logs, no weigh stations, no hours of service, no documents, nothing.

I'm highly upset that I paid this school after learning other average schools in the area taught you EVERYTHING from elds to to hours of service to hazmat and more. Pretty much anything I didn't learn here, was taught at other schools in the area. Sad.

The owner coerced me into making a good review before leaving the dmv as he did many others. Back to the instructors, they're good and teach you what the boss man tells them to and no more no less. But they need to get their act together if they haven't already. They're just allowed students to hop in those trucks willy nilly without any proper rotation and just skipping over others.

That was my experience and it incredibly dangerous ESPECIALLY when the instructors are inside in the ac not monitoring students. I hope the owner sees this and adjust his school accordingly, because every single word I've said above is 100% truth, spoken from an unfortunate first hand experience that cost me north of $5700.

Yeah I passed my test the first time. So what? When I went into my first orientation for a job with TMC, I ended up being sent home for no reason other than my driving skills on a 48 ft and sleeper cab were not satisfactory. Why? The day cabs with 28 fts. A whole different world between the 2.

So again, don't waste your time or money on this place if you wish to get your moneys worth and whats more, if you wish to actually learn anything of serious value other than backing up a small rinky dink day cab combo.

As I see there isn't any forum posts about this place yet on here, (that I've seen) I've made sure to cover my entire experience there and maybe this will serve as a decent guide for some time, acting as possibly the first and only review on this Florida Truckers Institute of New Port Richey,Truck Driving School Listings Florida