Looking for paid training/tuition assistance (Wisconsin)

Sanya,

Schneider is not training students at this point. I'm not sure where you live in WI, but you have one of the best schools in the nation located in Appleton (Fox Valley Tech) They are PTDI certified and a state funded program, so longer education at a fraction of the price.

I notice that you are 20 years old, that will be a problem getting hired with any of the large carriers. I would save your money for a couple years and ride this ecomomy out........at that point you will be hireable and they will be begging for drivers again.

 

Fox Valley Tech has one of the, if not THE longest truck driving program around.
The Sun Praire scholl is a CDL mill. As mentioned by another poster, Schnieder is not training at this time, nor are they accepting recent grads( as of 4 months ago).
Roehl MAY still be training newbies. They will take you upon graduation.

At 20, you can obtain a CDL. However, no OTR carrier will hire you. MAny will not take you until you are 23.
You are not allowed to operate a CMV in an Interstate manner until you are 21.

 

At your age I would stay away from CDL A School till your hireable. I would look at place like Duham Express, they handle expidited frieght in everything from pick ups to tractor trailers, and you will get some good experience in map reading and trip planing and the are nice company. They cover WI, MN, and parts of MI. Their home office used to be in Madison over by the airport off Stoughton Road...not sure where they are located now, but they do have offices all over the state. I'm sure they have a website. With a couple years of driving pick-ups, vans, box trucks, straight truck, and having route and trip planing experience and you would be able to take your pick of many companies. Courier work is very hard and long hours, if you hack that.....you would be a great truck driver. Just my 2 cents.

 

IMHO, DDS is a CDL mill. You train mainly on a crap range, very few actual road miles. You train to be able to pass your CDL. Then, on to a company (maybe) to really be trained. I think DDS costs are about $5,000 for 3 wks. I believe they provide housing.
My cousin graduated from there some yrs ago. His last week he got his CDL A. At that time he had 59 miles on roads (not range). That was his total on road mileage.
I went to FVTC. It cost me about 1,800.00 to attend, including books and license fees.
I had 420 road miles racked up by the day I tested for my CDL A.(These were miles DRIVING on public roadways)
By graduation day, I had just a hair under 2,000 miles driving on PUBLIC roadways.
Although I am not 100% sure as I am not a company hiring drivers, if I was, I would give the edge to a FVTC graduate, vs a DDS grad.

Further more, no school, including a company school, can gaurentee you employment until you have successfully completed all required training(CDL) and have been accepted AFTER company orientation.
Regardless of what they say.

 

Great info- thanks. I'm 34 and will be heading up to FVTC asap. Any issue with living in Ohio? Will I have to take another CDL test to work here?

 

Going out of state like that, you will typically have to get a drivers license for that state, then you can get the cdl permit for that state, then after school, you take that state's cdl test to get their cdl license. After all that, you go back to your original state and get your cdl transfered. You won't have to take the test again since it's just a transfer.

Alternately, you could attend a school in your home state and avoid all that hassle. Since you were considering a school a couple states away, I'm assuming you won't have a problem putting up a hotel for 5-6 weeks. I just finished a school just north of Cincinatti that I feel was an excellent choice. The instructors were all excellent and really new their stuff. Class sizes were such that you had plenty of seat time. And when road driving, it is usually just you and the instructor or possibly just one other student, depending on the truck. Check out my thread for Napier Truck Driving School. There are recruiters that come every week, and the school has lots of applications for other companies so there is plenty of job possibilities from respectable companies. I once read on this forum that Crete only hires students from PTDI schools. I don't believe that Napier is PDTI, but not only did I submit an application to Crete through the school, I also recieved a pre-hire and they are on my top three list.