Profile For Tim J.

A company paid training program will give you lot's of classroom instruction. They need you to learn their system, workflow of receiving loads, delivering loads, how to work their Qualcomm or Tablet, especially HOS regulations, reporting and editing.

I went to a local private school to get my CDL. There we had almost NO classroom. Road training in the morning, backing course in the afternoon. A few videos and some reading material, but they only focused on the skills necessary to pass the road test. So when I went to company training, all I had was my CDL. Then we did classroom every morning and driving/backing every afternoon. Without that two weeks of classroom training, I would have been totally unequipped to go out one the road. And then the two weeks with the trainer brought all that classroom stuff head on with reality. After I went solo, I spent almost all my free time reviewing the classroom material and training manual until I could do procedures from memory. But it took several months to get reasonably competent.

Classroom is vital for any new entrant into truck driving.

You're talking about company specific training that's different and that's my point. They will teach you that stuff when you get to your company it's specific to the company. Classroom time at an external driving school is different. You would have had to learn all that stuff with the company anyway.

I notice some schools minimize classroom time and spend most of the time teaching people how to drive while other programs spend over half the time in class.

I understand some class time might be important but It seems like class time is mostly an excuse for lack of trucks or trainers and too many students.

I talked to alot of drivers and they say you really don't learn anything to you get out with the company trainer.

What's your opinion?