Company paid training or Cdl school?

College training will be a lot cheaper than a private school.

 

Try these for trucking company school:
Western Dairy Transport - www.wdtmilk.com
Prime Inc.
FFE (Frozen Food Express)
KLLM Transportation - this company also owns FFE.
@TravR1 can give information on training and freight lanes at FFE and KLLM.

 

If you pay for it yourself go for it.

It is absolutely the best way. The result should be a nice mint CDL in your wallet with the trimmings on it ready to go. The only training you will then require with any employer is indoctrination in how not to do the things School taught you to do. =)

 

Any beverage distributors around? That's the route I went. Got hired on at the local Budweiser distribution warehouse. Went in with nothing. Took the AP test for Class A....passed on the 1st try after studying the manual for about 2 weeks.

Worked out on the delivery route as a helper for about 6 months and was able to drive out in the trade with my route driver. The big advantage is that the route I was on was downtown Athens, GA = college town = a lot of congested traffic and tight quarter maneuvering.

Our warehouse parking lot also had striped off areas where we could pratice straight line backing, offset backing, parallel parking, and alley docking. So most days we were done with our delivery route by noon or a little after...so the guys with their AP's could go practice their skills.

When I was ready, I went with a licensed driver to the DMV and took the skills test. Passed it with flying colors. Downtown Athens GA is still the only place I've ever driven where parallel parking is a regular occurrence....although fuel transport also requires having to get creative sometimes getting into position when there's cars, campers, motorcycles, etc all in the way of where I need to be.

Bottom line is....IF there's a beverage distribution company that's local where you can follow a similar path I did is the ticket. I had to come out of pocket for just the license itself. I actually got paid AND had fun while learning to drive a tractor-trailer.