Sage Truck Driving School - Phox

So this past Monday Dec 14th I started truck driving school through my college at Sage Truck Driving School here in San Antonio, TX. with the TPEG grant paying something like $2800, my trust fund paying paying the rest the only costs I have had is an $11 permit and gas to drive across town, and the $60 for the CDL / other 4 tests (and $11 for extra endorsements except hazmat which is like $100).

So far it has been so so, we have 2 weeks of in classroom training which consists of reading from a textbook from 2012 (little bit of outdated info but overall not TOO bad), we also watch videos on various trucking topics, like today it was 4 videos about backing... with some 70s disco fever music going on in the background of them haha. Then the teacher will review the chapter via powerpoint slides (mostly same stuff from the book), then we do a quiz... with some questions not being accurate or not being answered in the book or videos or pp slides... we also have to do the chapter review questions as homework.

We have had 3 teachers so far, one who has kind of a mean sense of humor and kinda picks on people (although they kind of earn it...), one who's old and not very tech savy (I have had to show him how to make ms powerpoint full size window like 4-5 times today) and an Australian guy who's funny as ever and ave us the answers to the homework for that night. like many Aussies he's got that I don't give a damn not politically correct attitude and man it's freaking awesome.

Day 1: Mostly an overview of the class, what we'll be doing, how long the class will be, etc. The chapters we went over were "The CDL" which was a basic overview of what that license is and we also went over a very basic idea of "pre trip inspections" and he took us outside and showed us a quick one to give us an idea of what needs to be. apparently DPS in TX doesn't care if you list of the parts you are doing in a pre trip inspection and point of fact when multiple students are testing in the same truck they only make the first one do it and not even a full one, just a few basics like checking oil, tires, lights... that kinda stuff.

Day 2: Started this class and all future ones at 7am instead of 8am like day 1 and also not taking lunch break so we are finishing at 3 instead of 5. This is mostly cause some of us needed to still get our permits and DPS offices close around 5-6pm, so yeah kinda needed to get out earlier. The very first thing we did is learned how to fill out paper logbooks... cause those are totally still being used a whole lot right? I mean Fmcsc (or whatever it is) totally didn't just pass a law saying all truckers must use e logs within the next 2 years... which none of my instructors knew about.... but we had to learn it anyways and we fill it out daily as on duty not driving for class time and off duty for breaks and before / after class. Then we went over hours of service and trip planning. hours of service was kinda confusing... I guess for the 10 hours you can't be on duty, only 8 of them have to be logged as sleeper birth? I guess other 2 can be logged as just off duty. It was a little confusing, especially since the video was so far outdated it talked about splitting sleeper birth being allowed... which it isn't... not since like 2004. Trip planning was interesting, but I'm already good at that kind of stuff... I'm the self proclaimed navigator during road trips with the family. I don't think I have ever gotten us lost... ever *knocks on wood*

Day 3: This was the day we got the Aussie guy... about half of the things he said in the first hour would prob be auto censored on this forum... does that give you an idea of the kind of guy he was... it was so funny. Told us a lot of stories from his earlier trucking days and even as a child. He crashed his dad's royce into a tree despite his father telling him not to touch it... well his daddy was a truck driver... drove those trains of trailers (forget how many he said they hauled) and he put him to work and made him pay off the damage. From that point on he's been a trucker though. About 1/3 through the day a recuruiting rep from Paschall Truck Lines (PTL) came by and talked about his company and gave us apps to fill out. Sage gives you life time job seeking assistance, but you gotta put in 2 apps during school to get it, so that was app #1. Sounds like an ok company for most but honestly not for me, they won't allow cats and you gotta do 45k miles of driving before you go solo, 5k miles are solo dispatch with trainer and then 40k miles team dispatch but not with a trainer. that's more than prime... kind of a good thing except it's not with trainer for most of the time. I'm trying to get me and my mom out of this apartment so we can stop paying so many bills and start saving for a house... tired of paying $730 in rent, plus power plus cable, etc it's just money down the drain. looking at about 2.5 months of training time before I could have my mom as a passenger and then what about my cats... could possibly get away with having them but not something I want to risk. Think there was one or two chapters we went over from the book... not to much to do Towards the end of the day they had to work on submitting more apps, I looked at their list of recruiting materails and roehl sounded fairly nice so I pulled up their website (the hell with paper apps) and looked over everything. everything sounded pretty good so I filled out an app for them.

I will be attending SAGE, in Lexington, SC.

Looking forward to reading about your journey. Have fun, and Stay Safe.

Day 4: Whoo all caught up on my days now as of today. We had day 2's teacher. We had to watch 4 very old videos about backing., so old the truck in the video was a cab over and I'm pretty sure the footage was recorded with a beta max or something... had 70s disco music playing and the driver had coke bottles for glasses oh and most of the cars looked like the ones from the movie Starsky and Hutch. Then a quiz, then we started going over basic controls of a truck, shifting, coupling and uncoupling (which without doing the driving part I was able to demonstrate without being shown) and special rig set ups (tankers, cattle trailers, doubles , triples, etc). each chapter had a quiz to go with it too.

After class I went on over to the DPS office (other states call them DMVs Texas in all of it's being different cause they can be calls them DPS) and applied for my class a cdl permit. filled out the paperwork, did vision test, finger prints and got my picture.. oh and paid $11. Then I had to take 2 written tests, combination vehicles and general knowledge. While the high road training program did help me I must say about half the questions on both tests were not covered in it and I went through all of HRT except the special endorsements stuff and passengers... oh and pre trip... sooo yeah might need to see if Brett can get that updated cause I only passed general knowledge barely. 20 questions, needed 14 right to pass... i got exactly 14 right. one of the questions wasn't even fair cause it had nothing to do with cdl stuff!!! "Which of these vehicle types requires a chemical fire extinguisher?" A) All trucks, B) motorcycles, C) firetrucks, D) taxis. I knew it wasn't motorcycles and because taxi cab drivers and fire dept doesn't need CDLS I went with A... trucks... nope that was wrong, it was Taxis... they don't even need a cdl (unless they're playing stuff the cab and manage to fit 15 people + the driver in one) so why the heck is that on a cdl general knowledge test... it was not in the high road training program. oh and apparently the fire ext in trucks need to be at least 1 qt in size... also not in HRT but on the test... I only knew it cause one of my class mates said he got that one wrong, he thought it was 2 qt but it was actually 1... I remembered him saying that... good thing.

so yeah HRT needs some updates... oh and in TX we have to inspect loads after 50 miles... not 25... sometimes that's on the test and they want the TX way not FMTSC way... even though FMTSC is federal which would over rules TX and prob be better anyways (if you don't lose your load after 25 miles why will you lose it after 50?)

Anyways though I did pass the per mit tests so now my ol class CM (class c + motorcycle endorsement) license has been cut and I got a nice shiny new paper permit till plastic comes in the mail.. in about 2 weeks cause Texas is slow and still doesn't print in the office like in ohio.

I'll be studying the rest of CDL test stuff now and finishing class.

I'll post future days as they happen.

I will be attending SAGE, in Lexington, SC.

Looking forward to reading about your journey. Have fun, and Stay Safe.

Apparently they are very well known by a lot of companies... in a good way. roadmasters (at least here in san antonio) has a lot of people fail the driving test... and they cost more. that's what we have been told... how true it is I don't know.

I will be attending SAGE, in Lexington, SC.

Looking forward to reading about your journey. Have fun, and Stay Safe.

Apparently they are very well known by a lot of companies... in a good way. roadmasters (at least here in san antonio) has a lot of people fail the driving test... and they cost more. that's what we have been told... how true it is I don't know.

I have talked to Sage and they sounded really good; 1 on 1 driving especially. At least that's what they told me. But I've read comments about them on some forums and they seem to have a good reputation as well.

Roadmasters on the other hand, I'm not sure I would attend any of their programs if they paid me. I don't necessarily buy into everything I read on the internet, but the reviews of that company were so overwhelmingly bad, I would not consider them at all.

I just found the section in this site (Company Sponsored Training Programs) that has reviews on the various companies that provide CDL training in house. What I was never aware of before, is that you can pay them the fee to take their course but take a job elsewhere. I liked the course offered by Roehl and it was far cheaper than Sage anyway. Sage quoted me $4,800 and Roehl is listed in this site at $2,800.

I just found the section in this site (Company Sponsored Training Programs) that has reviews on the various companies that provide CDL training in house. What I was never aware of before, is that you can pay them the fee to take their course but take a job elsewhere. I liked the course offered by Roehl and it was far cheaper than Sage anyway. Sage quoted me $4,800 and Roehl is listed in this site at $2,800.

Tuition for places that have multiple locations is probably gonna vary by location. Mine is about $4200 tuition, plus $155 for drug screen, MVR , and DOT Physical, all 3 paid to the school and they give you paperwork to take to drug screen (lab corps) and dot physical (Texas med clinic) and they pull MVR. Then you got $11 for permit and up to $60 for CDL (up to because Texas will take off $4 for every year you have left on current license). All the extra endorsements are $11 in TX except haz which is around $100. but those are optional. the $11 and $60 are paid to the school.

You might look into seeing if your sage is part of a title IV college and if they have any kind of fin aid, my TPEG grant covered around $2800 or so.

Starting day 5 today, then I get the weekend off. I'll report back later with what I learn.

Day 5:

We had the Aussie teacher back again, which by the way, his real name is Victor (don't know his last name) but he goes by Roo or Kangaroo. did I mention he's from australia yet... haha.

The day went by suuuuuuuper slow... I mean oh my god it seemed like it was never gonna end. No idea why I wasn't tired and teacher was entertaining as the first day we had him... but wow.

I asked him how many trailer he towed when he did the trains back in aussie... 10... 10 trailers is what he hauled with his dad's company, at some point aussie limited it to a max of 6. Told him if I was wearing a hat I would tip it to him because 10 trailers is impressive and I asked him their length, he said about 40' each... that's 400' of trailers, plus hitches plus truck... holy cow! longer than a football field.

As for what we learned: Communications - bassicly, use your blinkers, 4 ways when stopped on side of the road, avoid distractions... that kind of stuff.

Visual Search - different types of mirrors on the truck, how to use them, keeping a good following and sight distance.

Space Management - following distance and the importance of it, clearances (above and below), procedures for making turns.

Speed Management - stopping distance, hydroplaning, fuel economy, causes of accidents, proper use of cruise control, center of gravity and speeds effect on it, choosing a safe speed.

Night operation - using high beams (when and when not and guidelines), factors that effect night driving, impact of headlight glare, laws on headlights and aux lights, importance of adequate sleep. I want to touch on that last one, video we watched talked about if you're getting sleep to get out take a walk around truck, get some coffee, etc... well as I know and have learned from HRT program there's no cure for being tired except sleep, you would do 100x better easily if you stopped and took a nap for 30-60 min. you got 3 hours of extra time on your 14 that you can't drive so use half to 1 of them to take a quick power nap, the results will feel much better than coffee and will last longer. heck even a 15 min power naps will make you feel like $100 instead of a wrinkly old $1 bill you pulled out of your pocket after it went through a wash cycle. In all fairness, this was some kinda beta max tape (converted to dvd for classes) from the 70s or something. on the flip side back then you could split sleeper birth so it's still a poor excuse and advice in my opinion. moving on...

extreme driving - yeah you know using your big rig as one of those monster trucks and stuff.... no not really haha. No for the most part it was talking about driving in snow / ice conditions, learning about skidding / jackknifing. the effects of snow, mud and what not on your brakes, impacts of cold weather on fuel, driving in mountains... that kinda stuff.

That was all the stuff we went over in book, power point and a few videos.

Gonna talk to director of my school though cause there are some things we are being taught either by instructor or videos that are inaccurate. for instance the aussie guy did not know you could use flares instead of triangles. it's better to use the triangles but if you don't have them you CAN use flares. I showed him from the truckers bible (big ol "pocket sized" book of FMCSR rules that we were all given a copy of, updated aug of this year) and he was... oh I didn't know that.... yeah well the book said it too, but this is the trucker's bible so I believe it before anything or anyone else. The old geezer teacher didn't know you don't have to print off e logs anymore, as long as the elog meet logging requirements and you can sign it electronically. I found a nice elog app I have been using for learning purposes called Keep Trucking and it lets you e sign and has an inspection mode which explains that updated rule (as of dec 2014) and then lets inspector look at logs in a clean and simple way. you can also email them or fax them right from the app and get a pdf print out of specific days that you can then send to a printer or just save. so anyone pulling the I don't want to have to buy a qalcom for my truck excuse... well unless you are still using a dumbphone you have 0 excuse cause this app is free... plenty of others out there too if you're using a dumbphone still well you got bigger issues to worry about. there are easily 100 reason to own a smartphone and maybe 1-3 to not own one.

So yeah that concludes day 5. nothing super special.

I don't have class on Christmas so just day 6-9 next week and then we get to start learning to drive. oh i'm so excited!

Well I finished my last day of the 2 weeks of classroom training... man some of that stuff was boring but had to be done and now it is.

I got a pre hire from US Xpress Today that I'll be following up on on Monday.

I still need to finish my written tests for CDL (Air brakes, general knowledge and pre trip), then do my 10-11 drives at school and then finally take driving test.

Not looking forward to dealing with that manual tranny again but I'll deal with it for now... I'm hopping it gets easier for me.

One of the main reasons I am looking into US Xpress is because they have auto transmissions on most of the fleet. Yeah I know it would be better to go with manual so I don't forget and have problems if I decide to switch companies, but I personally think most companies will go the way of autos pretty soon for to many reasons to list.

If I can get a truck with an auto I would be cool with starting as soon as late Jan early feb.

What are you looking to run? Dry van , reefer , flat bed, no preference?

What are you looking to run? Dry van , reefer , flat bed, no preference?

No particular preference on the trailer type although my teachers have been telling me it's best to start as dry van because reefer you have stricter time commitments (most of that stuff is perishable so if you're late they'll refuse it and then you're in trouble), flat bed interested me but teachers have said that's really difficult at first and when you're new to the business you really want to keep it simple till you have the experience.

I do NOT want to run tankers though...

Honestly I'll take whatever I can get and I'm perfectly happy with OTR with home time being spread out... doesn't bother me since I'm giving up my apartment and living out of truck. If I get tired of sleeping in the truck I'll use my savings of not paying for an apartment and stay in a hotel for a couple of nights but honestly I have delt with worse than a truck sleeper. I have camped on the ground, air matress, cot, in a tent out of a tent, hotels, motels, couches, shared living space with up to 12 other guys... I can handle a lot so I don't think the sleeper with bother me much. As long as I have my laptop and a cell phone signal, food and a way to keep warm or cool.