Gah. Trucking School Problems.

Wow. Just wow. I'd be calling a lawyer about now. That is inexcusable. They basically just stole your husband's money and are refusing to work with him at all.

I have to be honest. Something is amiss here. Your husband paid for the schooling but it seems the school is doing everything they can to get rid of him. You said a couple of things that has me wondering:

Well he went for his Class A and the lead teacher took a dislike to him

He got along much better with the B instructor and things were going well

we put a lot of other stuff in our lives on hold only for this school, that we thought was an excellent choice, to treat him so badly

I've talked to some other students in the class and they said that his driving is good and they also felt like he was singled out and blocked from practicing and learning

He feels like he was unfairly pushed out and I tend to agree

So there's a lot of indication that he wasn't getting along with the people at the school and it seems they certainly lost interest in working with him. It seems they just wanted to get him out of there anyway they could. That's not right since you've paid your tuition already, but at the same time if you can't get along with people you're going to make your life 100 times more difficult than it would have been otherwise.

The second concern is that you really didn't want him doing this in the first place:

I posted here some months ago when my husband was first considering getting his CDL. I was not thrilled, but agreed as long as he tried his best to get a local/dedicated job before jumping to OTR. I really didn't want him to go OTR as we are still relative newlyweds and I also had a recent health crisis where he was my primary support. So he ended up going with a tech college where he would hopefully have a lot of different options as far as employers.

he should just swallow the loss of the difference in tuition money and get his B through the school.

So it seems you were kind of undermining his attempts to get a Class A hoping he'd get a Class B and therefore a job that would get him home every night. I don't blame you for feeling this way, but it obviously wasn't going to help him achieve the Class A.

So it seems to me from the little bit you've told us that you guys kinda made a total mess of this. You really weren't behind his efforts and he didn't seem to be helping his cause any either.

At this point I really don't know what your options are. He's already gone through a ton of training so getting his money back wasn't going to happen. He quit the school so they're correct in saying they are no longer obligated to help him. On top of it all you didn't want him doing it in the first place and that isn't going to change.

I hate to think that you guys wasted your time and money but it seems like he probably shouldn't have attempted this in the first place if you weren't behind him on this idea. As tough as that was going to make it in itself, it also doesn't seem like he helped his own cause any by failing to get along with the people at the school.

I honestly don't know what advice to give you guys at this point. This thing has become a complete mess.

Brett, you make fair points. And I was against him going OTR. But when he started school, I was supportive as I could be. I still wanted him to go local or dedicated but there were sooooo many companies hiring out of this school, I figured it wouldn't be a problem. In fact, when the instructor started making comments about his English and skills, he asked me if he should just drop down to Class B. I said no because it didn't seem that he was having anything but run of the mill issues mastering the skills.

In fact, I didn't think they'd actually drop him from the class. I thought they were just pushing him around, hoping he'd drop on his own because they had too many students for the amount of equipment and instructors. Usually, they cap the class at 8 Class A and 2 Class B. This time, they took on 10 Class A students. The instructor herself complained to the class about how there were too many students and how no one had dropped yet. I guess usually a few people quit in the first weeks, leaving them with 5-6 students. And right after he was dropped from the class, two students who were struggling with the skills dropped down to Class B voluntarily because they were nervous about what happened to him and didn't want to lose their money. Another student cracked under pressure and quit altogether, although I don't think that had anything to do with what happened to husband. So we've wondered if they pushed him out to get the class to a more manageable number.

Anyway, the day they said they were dropping him, I had an important job interview and I was stressed and distracted. So I advised him to try and get B because I didn't have any time to think about other options, like company school, and because it seemed like the easiest solution. After I got feedback here, I began to change my mind however he had already committed to the B class by then. But we thought he should get the difference in tuition back and when he approached the administration about it, they said yes and then changed their minds.

My husband is not someone who tends to have problems getting along with people, so I don't think it was his problem that the instructor had issues with him. He had impeccable attendance and was extremely dedicated to the class. As far as skills go, he didn't describe anything to me that sounded like more than typical beginner problems - missing shifts, took awhile to catch onto backing. But self-assessment of one's skills is rarely objective, so I would find it more believable that his problems were skill issues rather than personality issues.