United States Truck Driving School - Wheat Ridge, CO

IMO, SAGE in Henderson is a much better value for your money. The instruction there was 1 on 1.

 

There was a thread on this a couple of years back. My wife and I attended USTDS also. We were very happy with the experience. As far as one on one driving. We learned a lot watching the other drivers in our truck and got more than enough time behind the wheel. For backing practice, they give you your own truck so no sharing.

We talked to Sage and they totally turned us off. It felt like a time share sales pitch. I am sure they are fine but that was just our experience.

We also live in Loveland and USTDS had a location in Longmont. About 80 miles less driving round trip each day than Sage for us.

What we were not impressed with at USTDS was the placement person. I cannot remember her name but she is obviously paid well by Swift for each driver she sends there way. No matter what company we asked about she brought it back to how awesome Swift was. We chose US Xpress, which for a team was by FAR the best choice for new drivers. Team pay of .48 a mile and a $5,000 sign on bonus. She kept trying to talk us out of it.

 

lol, USTDS in Wheatridge is a joke, biggest bunch of liars and jerks on the planet, I still hear of them pulling stunts on drivers or lying to them. BTW, what good did going to Idaho Springs and back with an empty trailer do? Sadly MTA closed and left Colorado, when I went through, we ran I-70 Denver to top of Genesse and back at 65,000 lbs so we could get a feel from going up and coming down with a load. We also ran US 285 as fas as Bailey to get the feel for mtn. driving on a two lane.

WHy does the tution almost double plus interest if finance vs. cash? Are you sure that's not $6,000 including interest?

 

15 years of experience and you have personal knowledge of USTDS? Just when, exactly, did that happen?

 

I first interviewed with USTDS in Jan. of '96, it was a neat office, essentially an enlarged broom closet in the basement with two light bulbs. When I told him I had a felony he told me to buy a shovel, as no trucking company would ever hire me. Fast forward, 13 months later, I spoke with a different recruiter from USTDS at a jobs fair who told me the samething, I also spoke with a recruiter from MTA. They were 30 ft apart, he looked at the guy from USTDS, laughed and told me to meet with him the next day. Not only was his book of prospective companies thicker, but he actually called 8 companies from his book (local and OTR) to see who would pre-hire me (USTDS called one, May), he had pre-hire offers from Werner, CRST and a local lumber company before I left his office.

5 yrs later, I saw that same recruiter from USTDS at a jobs fair I was at with my wife, as a joke I went up and talked to him. I asked him what he could do for me with a felony, he pointed to a construction company across the way and said "they are hiring laborers", I loffed, showed him my CDL, told him I already had 450,000 miles exp. in a semi and walked away.

 

So, based on your two short conversations with a single recruiter 15 years ago you can make this sweeping statement regarding the entire organization? You sure bring a lot of credibility to the table. I am sure that you are accurately portraying your experience, it is just very limited. With 15 years experience, there are a lot of topics I would value your opinion on, this is not one of them.

You have two people here who actually attended the school and thought they were pretty good.

 

I attended the USTDS in Wheatridge for one week - my opinion of the place is the same as Stryker... its a joke. The idea that you're going to get the same training with 5-guys in a box as you would with one-on-one instruction is laughable.

 

The OP's own post points out why they are still a bad place.

WTF good does training in the mtn's do with an empty truck? Anyone can drive an empty truck from Denver to Idaho Springs and back. Now, do it while your in school @ 65,000 gross, and DON"T SMOKE THE BRAKES coming down Genesse. That was our requirement, if you smoked the brakes, it was 10 pts off that days driving score for every brake you smoked. Guess what that taught me, how to drive in the mtn's without smoking the brakes. In 15 yrs of running Colorado's mtn's, I can count on one hand that number of times I've smoked the brakes in those mtn's. The first and worst time almost sent me to the runaway ramp, I was 2K over gross and had a brake out of adjustment, that I wasn't allowed to adjust. Yeah, I shouldn't have taken the load, but I didn't have much choice as I didn't find out until after I was on the road that it was overweight. In fact, every time I've smoked the brakes, it was while pulling intermodal, which are notorious for poor maintanence and the driver doesn't have much recourse.

My class at MTA started off with 10 students, after two days it was down to 9 students. We ran 3 to a truck with an instructor, if there had been 10, they would have run 4 trucks on the road. We went M-S 8am til 5pm six days a week until graduation day, where we started testing out at 11 am, most of us graduated, had our certificates and were done by 1 pm.

I'll go one further on this, both of my nephews worked for a PVC company here in Denver, it's owned by their parents neighbor. The company paid for both of them to get their Class B license thru USTDS. After one week, neither one could fill out a log book properly, they both passed, but neither one could drive a truck worth a ####. The company has since stopped doing business with USTDS and now uses Sage or one of the other companies.