Trucking School a Good Career Move

Going to a quality CDL school to make a career change can be one of the best decisions you ever make.

This is one of the fastest possible ways there is to gain a new skill that is in high demand in the workplace. Think about it. Getting a degree takes years. Acquiring specific skills such as computer programming or engine mechanics takes many months if not years. Even becoming a hairdresser takes months.

Getting your Class A CDL takes a mere weeks. This depends, of course, on whether you attend full-time or part-time. But the point is that CDL school gives you a valuable new skill that can translate into a lifetime career in a shorter time than almost any other career change.

But you must understand that trucking schools only give you the bare minimum to start your new career – your CDL license. Obviously this is the most important part. You can’t move forward without it.

But CDL school stops right there. You learn the skills needed to get your CDL and your teaching ends. The school has done its duty, getting you your license, and that’s it.

Don’t expect to learn the skills you’ll need to drive out in the “real world.” Don’t expect to learn how to back a truck up to a loading dock or how to successfully maneuver in city traffic. That’s not the function of CDL school.

Of course, you might do some city driving and some backing during your time at school. But that will only be based on whether it relates to passing your CDL test. For example, if you need to do a backing maneuver as part of the test, then you will practice that backing maneuver. If part of the road test includes city driving then you will drive in the city.

However, don’t confuse this with acquiring “real world” skills. Practicing only exactly what you need to accomplish to pass the test is different from learning “how to drive a truck.”

This is not a knock on CDL schools. They are only doing their job, which is to help you pass your road test and get your CDL. Their job is not to teach you how to drive in general.

This doesn’t mean that real-world advice and lessons are not given. Instructors will go over some of the more practical and important parts of being a truck driver. You will learn about general safety and rules of the road, for instance.

But a CDL school is focused primarily on you getting your CDL, and there’s only so many hours in the day. Time must be spent wisely. Instructors need to drill into your head what you’ll need to know to pass the written test, and they need to let you practice what you’ll need to do on the driving test. There is little time available to spend on things that are not part of your CDL test.

OK then, just exactly what is the test all about? That all depends on which state you are in.

In all states there is a written test involved. In all states you must know how to do an air-brake test and a pretrip inspection. You must know the rules concerning hazardous material, hours of service, and keeping a log book. Every CDL school will teach you these things.

What will be different is what you will do when you’re in the truck. In all states you will need to take a road test, which is usually several miles of driving with a tester present.

What’s different in all states is whether you’ll need to do any specific maneuvers on a course and what those maneuvers are. Some states require several course maneuvers and some none at all.

For instance, in Massachusetts (where I got my Class B) there were four course maneuvers required: a straight back (backing up in a straight line), an alley dock (backing up at a 90-degree angle), parallel parking to the left and parallel parking to the right, both while backing. This was done on a course using cones as a boundary.

So we spent countless hours out on the course practicing these maneuvers. We practiced almost nothing related to driving a truck except how to complete these maneuvers.

However in Texas (where I got my Class A) there were zero course maneuvers required. The only thing we needed to do other than the road test was back up along a curb during the road test. There were no maneuvers on a course with cones or any of that stuff.

So instead of spending hours on a course with cones, we spent a lot of time driving along the route of the actual driving test.

Obviously you would want to go to a CDL school in a state that has the fewest requirements to get your license. You might have little control over this, so it’s the luck of the draw on how hard your test will be.

But you can be certain that if you attend a decent accredited school instructors will focus almost exclusively on what you need to know and do to pass your test, giving you the best chance of getting your license.