OK, I'm going to stop lurking now that someone's brought up National Trucking School.
I have never wasted so much money in so short a time than in the three weeks I spent at NTS. Their advertising is totally fraudulent, their instructors are arrogant and ineffective, and they're a joke in the trucking world.
For example, NTS advertises one week of night driving; they delivered less than one hour on one day. They have four students per truck; but you only spend less than half a day on the road so you MIGHT get 45 minutes to an hour per day behind the wheel.
The trucks and 40 foot trailers they use for backing and coupling/uncoupling are so old and unsafe they don't dare let 'em out on the road. 40 footers pulled by old cabovers taught me nothing about backing the big Werner conventionals with 53 foot trailers...and the instructors WILL watch you make the same mistakes over and over with no help at all.
The only positive parts of the school were the on-site track and the excellent correspondence course we were required to complete at home before the actual three weeks of instruction.
I barely graduated from that diploma mill; or so I thought. As 'third-party testers', NTS has no incentive to really teach their students because there is no real outside quality control except perhaps the occasional FDOT undercover student. They 'failed' many of the students, including me, on the final pretrip inspection exams, backing and driving tests, but of course everyone passed their retest.
For $3500 you WILL graduate from NTS. However, very little of what I learned was relevant when I started with Werner Enterprises. I could not back up those trucks...and the pressure of daily deadlines ensured that I would get no practice. It was 'sink or swim' for real.
I lasted three months with Werner. Although Werner was a great company, I felt utterly unprepared for OTR trucking by NTS. I don't blame NTS totally; I had just retired from the US Navy and was going through a rough transition to civilian life.
Now I've been retired for six years and am driving a 28 foot straight truck on a dedicated Jacksonville FL-Macon GA route. After that short-lived nightmare in '97 I have a phobia of getting behind the wheel of a big truck again. The only OTR job I'm willing to contemplate in the near future is as an expediter.
BTW, I was a MSF certified Motorcycle Safety Instructor in the Navy.
Thanks for letting me vent....Mikex(
