3 day course to get CDL

a 35 foot camper and a 4 wheeler manual tranny are quite different than a 18 wheeler.

A 3 day school you will get what you pay for - Good Luck

 

3 days aint enough time to learn how to adjust your seat.

At best you are going to show up at the DMV shaking in your boots at how heavy that 40 ton vehicle really was.

You can keep your little trailer and pickup. Trucking is nothing like that.

 

Backing a camper and a semi trailer, while similar will be different in that when you bend the semi trailer it is longer so it takes longer for the trailer to bend.

Driving a stick in a car is completely different than a semi. Car transmissions are sychronized while trucks are not.

Now, as far as classes being enough. Most trucking company imsurances want you to have I believe at least 120 hours of training to first before getting hired. Imo, 3 days is not enough, but people learn at different rates too.

That being said, there is a way to get your cdl free without going otr. Contact your local unemployment office. They will have a program, here in Ohio it is called WIA. Other states it is called something different. Anyways, the state will pay for you to be trained in a different field than you are in right now. They will pay for school and everything. Look into that program. Since it is a grant you dont have to pay it back and you are not locked into a specific company contract and you can go to a private trucking school, which generally are better programs.

Good luck.

 

What kind of job can you get with a 3 day class and CDL and no experience ? I can't imagine this working out very good.

 

You are going to hurt yourself with just a three day course. You cannot possibly learn your limitations, learn the shifting, learn anything of value that you need to learn in a proper school.

That's like handing me a Piper Archer airplane after a couple touch and goes and saying "Off you go." into a world full of ATC, Center, Approach, Departure, Ground etc.

 

I think the hardest part would be the knowledge part of the tests. The air break test, especially "leakdown" part of the test and he pretrip. you need to pass those before they will take you on the road test and the skills tests.

The airbrake and leakdown tests are really anal. Read the CDL handbook over and over, and over again, before you go in for the test. They will want you to know at what psi the protection valve is supposed to pop out at, same for the trailer. You need to explain the procedure throughout the test. like how you are waiting for the air presure to build up and when you are purging air pressure to trigger the protection vales. They also want you to point at everything when you are running through the pretrip.

I don't think you would have much problem with the skills test where they have you alley dock, or paralell park. or the road test. Most states let you pull up a few times and get out and look on the skills test.


I don't think you could pull it off without really studying the CDL manual first. 3 days isn't that much time.

 

It's no help. You are dealing with a 65 foot if not 70 foot 40 ton vehicle 13.6 feet and 102 wide with a turning circle so big you will be straining to see that far back while docking. You might have the basic principle of steering wheel work down managing your 35 foot trailer. (That's the good thing.)

If it's snowing or raining hard, that dock back there will be more than 100 feet away and somewhat theoretical until you close in, hopefully without hitting anything. Even the slope of the ground your trailer and tractor is on will affect how it behaves.

Your tractor trailer will be almost sentient with the amount of computer AI processing alive in it at all times. It will almost know what you are trying to do. Within the limits of many hundreds of parameters set by the company via computer in what you are allowed to do or not to do.

Lives will depend on how you do with the physics of that 40 ton. I would not let you take a DMV tester for a drive after only three days. You need more than that. Actually a formal training course of instruction, something like 160 hours or 240.