Review Of AIT Las Vegas,NV

My review of AIT truck driving school here is Las Vegas NV. I did the 4 week course. Wrote them a check for $4.240.00 paid myself no loans or grants. Swift the company I will be going with will pay me back that amount so as long as I don't do anything stupid while driving for them I will end up paying nothing for the school. The 4 week course was 2 week of class room training 8:30am to 4:30pm. The last 2 weeks was in the range and road and that was from 2:30pm to 11pm. You do have a choice of 5:20am to 2pm but I did choose the evening class for the last two weeks.


My class was 4 people including myself. The first 2 weeks was classroom. First week we spent 100% of the time in the DMV book and took the DMV written test that Friday of the first week, general knowledge, combinations, air breaks, doubles triples and tankers. Will take the hazmat test once my finger prints clear. All paid for by the school. The 2nd week of class room training we learned about the trucks, driving the trucks, map reading, trip planning and log book stuff. During the 2 weeks we took a total of 14 tests made it out of the class with a 92%. Home work every night except the last day and the home work is graded as well. My teacher Ms Parson was a great teacher. She had 15 years driving experience mostly with swift. She had been teaching for the better part of 5 years. As long as you pay attention to what she was trying to teach you, you will get it. Things will fall in to place so the class room part of it went by with no problems.


The last 2 weeks was the range and road portion of training. This part was much harder than the class room; At least it was for me. The class was split in to two me and another student took the evening class and the other 2 students went and did the morning class. My training rig was a 2007 Freightliner Columba 10 speed with only 145k miles on it, pictured below, it drove well good A/C but it did not steer worth beans. Very poor steering radius, the driving instructor said if we can learn to steer and shift in this truck any other truck will be easy for us. So I took the trucks short comings as a positive.



The driving instructor was Mr. Conner. Really good guy with about 20 years worth of driving experience. We got Mr. Conner on his last CTD class (short class, as they put it) as he will be getting both his feet worked on and will be about of work for about 6 months. The last two weeks are spent learning your pre trip which is about 5 pages worth of stuff you have to memorize, your range which is learning how to back in to a 90 degree ally dock, backing serpatean (I can't spell it and spell check has no idea what I am trying to spell) which is backing up thru an s turn, a parallel park and right hand turn while hitting your marks and not hitting any cones. And the road which is learning how to shift and drive the truck in traffic while successfully navigating the roads and highways, making your turns correctly and not hit anything or anybody. (Witch I don't know if it's my luck but people seem to walk out and cut in front of me in the truck more then I have ever seen in the years of driving my car.) All the while towing a 53 footer non air ride trailer.


Mr. Conner was a great instructor able to talk me and the other student thru all of our issues, again as long as you listen to what your instructor is telling you and apply was he is telling you to your driving it will work and things will fall in to place. Made it thru thru road and range with a 90% or better.



I still will miss a gear or two while I am out with my mentor but I will only get better by shifting more and more, Same with my docking, Not perfect at it now but as I do it more and more I will get better at it. The school cannot teach you how to be a great driver, you have to learn that while out on the road experiencing driving your rig and learning from it on your own. But AIT will help you get started and they will show you how to be a safe driver. I would recommend AIT as many starter companies will hire there students. For personal reason I am going with swift but if you go with AIT you have more than a handful of starter companies willing to take students from this school. Thank you for your time and drive safe everybody.

 

Bump !!!! (just because I can)