The next 5 days you are drilled about company policies, DOT policies, securing your loads, doing the paper work for your company and the DOT. Plus you must within these days also get a physical and DOT JD Truck Training Centre drug screen.
How many hours driving are required in the course? Make sure this does not include sitting in the passenger seat! You need plenty of experience driving and handling a big rig.
The advantage to this type of Truck driving school is the cost. It will be less expensive compared to a private school. If you are in a rush to become a truck driver, then you should also consider the time. A public institution with trucking schools take longer to complete compare to a private school. You should compare the cost, curriculum and the time that it will take to complete the course from both a private and public facility to see which is best for you.
For example Chicago is a truck driving school big city to get through. From 6:00 am in the morning to about 8:00 pm at night you will have a lot of traffic. 3:00 pm rush hour begins and doesn't settle down until 8:00 pm; most big cities are like this. If you are going to be going through at rush hour you're best bet is to wait at a truck stop for a few hours and take a nap.
If you don't like your experience and the students coming out of the school aren't satisfactory to the companies they go to work for then the school is going to die a long, slow death. Nobody will HR Truck Licence want to attend. So they will get straight to work filling you with information.... and tons of it.
Once you successfully pass the driving course then you will go to work for the company that hired you during your training period as a driver trainee. You will be coupled up with a more seasoned driver for a certain amount of time, probably not less than a month and longer in some cases.
Backing and parking your truck. Or how to enter in a parking lot, or mountain driving and driving on ice are all things you should be prepared to know. To be a professional truck driver, making the big money behind the wheel of a big truck is what you do. In my future articles I will be covering these things teaching you what the trucking schools do not teach you for your CDL license.