Should I go to Trainco Truck Driving School or Great Lakes Truck Driving School?

$6K is too much. You can attend a community college CDL school for around $2K or less. You don't need lifetime job placement. You can find the jobs that best suit you on this forum or Careerbuilder or Indeed websites.

If you do limit yourself to the two schools you mentioned, go to the cheapest one.

Of the trucking company sponsored programs you mentioned, Roehl flatbed or Prime flatbed or CRST flatbed. CRST is a team operation, but has only an 8 month obligation for the CDL training.

Ideally, the best route would be a community college CDL school, then sign on with a tanker company. For example, Superior-Carriers has terminals in Ohio & Schneider tanker division hires new CDL grads also.

 

In my area, Toledoish, TrainCo has partnered with Owens Community College and that's actually where you go when signing up at Owens now. Owens used to have their own CDL program and it seemed pretty good, I'm still driving with a clean record I don't know what the cost is now, back in 97 it was $3995 for 6 or 8 weeks (CRS disease) for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I can't imagine a school that wouldn't have job placement or a job fair to hook you up with employers that hire newbies as you near the end of school, Owens had @20 companies come talk to us. Keep in mind that paying for you own schooling will not keep you out of a company's training program, BUT it will keep you from being indebted to them for 8 months, a year or more paying off their CDL training. As Chinatown said, lifetime job placement is unnecessary if you keep your record clean. After a few years of keeping a clean record you can pretty much pick and choose who you want to work for. Now when I get the itch, I interview potential employers to see if I really would want to work for them.

 

Wouldn't worry about the transmissions. If you can shift a 9 or 10 you can shift a 13 or 15. You may go your whole career without ever running an 18 as they seem pretty rare and are more for heavy haul and specialized.

 

Plain and simple NO. I taught for them for a short period, didn't care for their methods and the student for sure did not get enough hours behind the wheel. What they do was all city. Go to that light turn left go to the next turn left. go to the next turn left then make a right into the yard and switch with one of the 3 other guys in the sleeper and do it all over again. Don't tell the students too much factual info it will scare them.

 

I heard the same about roadmaster. Can anyone confirm?

 

I see it looks like TrainCo doesn't have the same standards as when Owens CC was running the program here. We drove a lot, on the highway, on two lane federal routes, through towns and cities, etc. Of course those showing more skill got a bit less time behind the wheel than those showing less so that was sometimes a bit scary. Our testing location was 80 miles away, south of Lima and we drove at least that far everyday.
My wife got her class B through her employer and had to test at TrainCo. I helped her with studying for her pre-trip with my old one, (can't believe I have that stuff!) so she was pretty well versed on what to expect. Well, she starts her pre-trip portion and the examiner just hurried her along telling her not to worry about this or that because it isn't on the test! It seemed that his idea of a pre-trip was checking the fluids and starting the truck and rolling! No air pressure tests of any kind, etc. My wife was told that if you rent their automatic dump truck to test in you'd pretty much be guaranteed to pass as long as you didn't run someone over, so she did and passed first attempt. A couple of guys she works with took the company truck there to test and all failed for BS reasons, until they rented their dump truck!

 

Trainco,

they settled that big lawsuit against them a couple years ago.



If they haven't changed their ways,

I'd avoid them !