Getting a CDL A on your own without school??
 

If you get your own Class A (not attending school or a training program through a carrier), how hard is it to then find a job?? Husband has a Class B already that he did on his own. We're just trying to figure out if spending the $ for school will help him better find a job. Basically either way he has no OTR experience, right? He drives a cement mixer now.

If your husband already has a Class B and driving experience, he should have some familiarity with some of the rules and regulations of the road. All you will get at a school is a CDL. If he gets a Class A then he may be able to start with a trainer and start earning money a little faster. You can't learn this business in a classroom. The problem I have with most of these schools is that they don't offer enough actual driving time. Since that is what we mostly do, we should spend a lot of time behind the wheel. If he has driving experience in a Class B vehicle, it would help him even though it won't count as experience with most carriers. I would check with some of the training carriers such as Millis, Swift, Roehl, Schneider, CRST, etc., These people are the ones who can best answer your questions. I got my CDL many years ago when we learned by getting behind the wheel. We didn't have driving schools back then. There are several recruiters who frequent this board. They could best answer your questions, at least as far as their respective carrier's are concerned. If it were me, I would go ahead and get the license on my own. Keep in mind that you will likely need to do a road test in a Class A truck with a trailer. I am not sure how they handle the transition from Class B to Class A. I know that he will need to at least take the written combination test. It is difficult to rent a class 8 truck without first having a Class A license. If he could obtain his CDL before going with a carrier, he may avoid the long term commitment for training. That will be left up to the respective carrier. There have been some on the board who have gotten their Class A license without going to a driving school. Bandit's Cousin is one that comes to mind. He is in HHG. You might shoot him a pm and ask.

The summer that I turned 21, my first year on wheat harvest was when I got my CDL. I got the study book, and I took the tests/road test, and got my license. The guys that I drove for has trucks, so I had a truck/trailer for the road test.
If you can find someone you know who has a truck/trailer for the road test, you shouldnt have any trouble getting the Class A.
I was going to try to get the Intrastate license when I turned 18. Come to find out, no CDL is required for farm use vehicles.

While not impossible to find a Class A driving job with out attending a CDL school it is very difficult.

If you want to find out just how difficult then call some carriers and tell them:

I have a Class A CDL, no Class A driving experience and have never attended a driving school and see what they say.

Years ago I got my cdl on a whim, I read the tri-fold brochure at the dmv, took the tests and passed, there was a guy outside who would rent you his truck, we drove around for an hour or so and went back so I could take the road test, I passed, I never drove for about 8 years, then the cdl license came into being, I bought a $15 study guide, took the test and passed again, another 5 years go by and I get some part time jobs driving stage/lights/sound around the mid-west, then no driving for 7 years. Now it’s 2007, I decide to go driving full time, there was one company that said if I passed their road test I’d be driving in 3 days, I told the recruiter that I wouldn’t be doing him any favors due to my lack of experience, he didn’t seem to mind. I personally believe that by attending a PTDI school I made a much wiser decision, I got the training I never had, became a safer driver, more knowledgeable about rules/regs and opened up many more doors than had I just gone with the big company with the white trucks.
Anybody can get a class A cdl without going to school, getting a good job may not be so easy.
My advice is this, go to a PTDI school, you’ll learn more and not be a slave to some company contract, sure you may not have had to spend that money but you’ll be a safer more marketable driver in the end.
Just my 2 cents

I agree completely. Your odds of getting on with a carrier without going to school are nill. Its mostly an insurance thing.

I did back in the mid 90's of course I got mine because I was a mechanic prior to driving OTR. Of course my father who drove for 30 years was my trainer so that helped there and he knew a company that would hire me when I did turn 21. I had no problem getting a job driving but times have changed.

Difficult but not impossible at best to get a good job without formal CDL schooling. Not just any schooling either. First try and narrow down your list of companies you would LIKE to work for and ask what their requirements are. Don't just go to any school only to find out later that the company you pick doesn't recognize their training.
With TMC for example, we require a 160 hour course and only from certain schools on our list.
Best of luck to you.

Not un-true, but the other side of the coin is that I blew six grand to go to driving school, and it turned out the company I went with would have been glad to train me and get me a CDL if they had known me ahead of time. We trained one guy from the warehouse, and a couple guys off the street in my time there. I was the only sucker in the whole bunch working to pay off that $6,000 tab for CDL school.

On the other other side, I had no idea that company existed, and I found out about them through the placement office at CDL school.

I also think I got better, more broadly applicable training in school, and it was a good way to go, except for the exorbitant tuition.

(Everybody else who went through that school went through JTPA. I was apparently a real sucker for putting the whole tab on my Visa. Which was, in retrospect, an incredibly stupid thing to do. Sort of. OTOOOH, it all paid off, and OTOOOOH, I paid like $10,000+ for school once I got done with all the interest. So what do you do about hindsight? It's hard to say. I guess the main thing is I made it all work, and I'm not broke anymore, and I'm making a viable go of being a freight relocation engineering technologist for all that.)

Thanks for all the replies! If DH decides to do the school route the hardest thing will be we'll have no salary for 6 weeks and no medical benefits. Lots to think about.

i would not go to school. pay all that money, time, stress. then get hired at a company to most likely find that you made more money driving a cement truck. i got my class b working for a oil co. the co also had a big rig tanker. i would go out & practice a lot on my off time & days with the tanker driver to learn enough to get my class a cdl.

The point I think some are missing is just because some tiny mom and pop outfit is willing to hire someone with no school doesn't mean that the larger more established companies are willing to hire that driver if they decide to move on. You are seriously handicapping yourself by not going to school. There are exceptions but seriously, what are your chances of being one of those exceptions? Pretty poor.

If your interested in flatbed Maverick will hire you without cdl school. We had a guy in my orientation that got his cdl by running around with an owner operator and Maverick gave him a chance.

I would be a so-called "exception" :lol:

Got my CDl on my own and went o/o day one :)

I'm a success story though, followed by lots of mud, sweat, and gears!

Well if you stay at the mom and pop place a year or 2 then you have exp. and you can go anywhere.

Disagree. That may have been the case years ago but not today. You MIGHT get on with another mom and pop but not with a company that's well established.

so are you saying a guy with 5 years OTR exp. wouldnt be able to get on with a well established company cuz he didnt go to school to get his cdl.???? Most of the well established companys want exp. or recent grands.

Most companies insurance want to see that piece of paper that says "I graduated".

Check into some of the local community colleges in your area.

The local CC here offers a night an weekend course that lasts 8 weeks. You do the classroom portion of the training in the evenings and the driving portion on the weekends. I'm not 100% certain on this, but I am pretty sure that they also mix in some night driving also. Which is something you won't get from most weekday schools.

Good luck.

Not entirely true. TMC may prefer to work this way, but they certainly don't require it. They've taken numerous students from the CDL school up the road from me and it's a 120 hour course. Ask Rebecca or Matt in recruiting if they've ever heard of Allied Truck Driving Academy in Aberdeen, OH?

IMO, most if not all companies look more at your work history and driving record than what school you've attended. A simple road test will give them a good idea if you have the first clue about driving a truck. Even PTDI doesn't make much of difference anymore. Crete claims to only hire from PTDI Certified schools and they offered me a chance to come to orientation. I didn't attend a PTDI school.

The piece of paper that says you graduated from trucking school is worthless after 1-2 years. Then, the only piece of paper thats worth something is your DMV report, with no blemishes, or very few.

And regarding all the mom&pop outfits- how many of you have driven for such a place? Some of the best driving jobs are through carriers like such.

I'd NEVER work on G-Man's 2nd truck making percentage because he's so small. I'd rather run for 25cpm for a mega carrier because they can afford to give me cool tshirts, buttons, and have 10,000 other drivers passing me on the road. :roll:

I agree, some of the best jobs are with the mom & pop's.

As for the insurance companies wanting to see the piece of paper from the CDL school. I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that this never happens. That info might make the carrier feel a little better about hiring you, but the insurance company would never see the certificate. My wife is an insurance agent and she insures several truckers around here, from fleets to owner/ops and they've never even verified experience. Not even once. You "say" you have X years experience and your MVR is clean, that's good enough for the insurance company. I'd love to see documentation from a company sometime where an insurance company sent them a request to verify someone's experience or to get a copy of their CDL school diploma. It flat doesn't happen.

Sorry, gotta call BS in that one...

Well said redsfan. The certifcate of completed training pretty much gets you through your first year, especially if ya job hop :)

You ARE correct, there are exceptions. The 160 hour class thing is more of a guidline. We hire from a list of a few hundred schools and each has different hours of training.

New and lovin it
 

Igot my cdl in Canada on my own; withthe socalled driver shortage I thought it would be fairly easy to get a job but it took a while ( 6 mths.). Finally landed one on flat bed which I don't mind except it's not the highways i"d perfer to run ,I was looking to run west Instead of east but It'll get my feet wet till I find a carrier that does do the longer runs out west that i perfer. The one thing I like about flat bed is that I'm not doing a lot of the city delivery thing trying to find different places every day,All our loads are maxed on the weight if not sometimes a bit over. I still stop or get on the C.B. a lot to make sure I'm heading the right direction,not so much in the U.S. but in Ontario. I've come to realize that we have the worst infrustuture going,espiecally in the GTA<Hamilton< Kitchener areas. The freeways suck and the signs are even worse. Pretty bad when I go south of the border and find where I have to go and then get lost in the province I live in, all in all I do like the challenge and will get used to the highways and my new career change even if it means buying a gps to help me along. Just a few unimortant thoughts I'd throw at you's

It's the same if you graduate with a BA, BS or whatever from college--even a master's degree. The paper ain't that useful as the years roll by. You have to prove yourself at the real school--the school of hard knocks--day in and day out. That's what counts.

That's an eye-opener! :shock: Perhaps the only time it is checked if some poor soul is involved in a fender-bender or worse.

Very true.

It can be done, I did it on my own, but I also had many years experience driving trucks, and backing trucks, etc. before getting my licence. Getting my CDL was no problem at all since I had all this experience.

But keep in mind I had to learn all the rules of the road on my own, the hard way, Nobody taught me how to slide tandems, or taught me what to do when you go through the scale, I learned a lot from other drivers along the way.

I don't think that companies necessarily require you to go to a school, A CDL is a CDL, no matter how you got it, Of course I don't know anything about these big companies but I have never heard of a company advertising that you must have graduated from CDL school