I am writing this article to try to inform prospective truck drivers of some of the dubious “schools “ out there. I was a victim of the truck driving schools enticing promises a few years ago and before others fall into the same trap I did I would like to help you know what to look out for. First in a lot of local news papers and online job search sites there are a ton of “great opportunities” they lure you in with 40k first year , paid schooling, job placement, paid to travel, ect…
Well first of all most of these schools are already under contract with companies to place people in trucks with 1 year contracts which they make you sign at the beginning of these classes. A large portion of these companies start drivers off at an intolerable wage to under cut competition and the training is sub quality and usually last 3-4 weeks and only teach you enough to get the license. You also often have to pay for rooms while attending the schools . Once you finish your schooling you are swept off to reality where you find that you are obligated to pay part of the schooling back and are locked into a low wage contract.
The next thing you find out is you have to pay for part of your insurance and extra fees that go into “escrow” such as truck recovery fees and early contract termination fees ? All together when I first started I was paying out $500+ dollars a month and only making around 300 a week.
I will give you the basic breakdown of how my pay went.
.27 a mile and average of 1200 miles a week = $324.00 minus $100 dollars truck recovery fee for the first ten weeks and minus $100 dollars to pay off the remainder of the schooling they didn't cover minus $35 week towards insurance plus I opted for $10 week to 401k which brings your weekly paycheck down to a grand total of $ 69.00 roughly granted during good weeks it made it to around $150 to $200 whi9ch is before taxes and tolls. And generally tolls are reimbursed after a few weeks but on average it cost around $100 a week to live on the road. So your 40k by time it is all said and done is just a dream. Plus when you cant handle starving anymore and have to quit they expect you to pay the entire tuition which runs 7-9k.
By no means am I saying truck driving is a bad profession but if you are getting into it make sure to read the fine print of any contract and you are probably better off paying a community college or trade school with a student loan or grant and going from there. There are some companies that have their own schools which is a little better. Also be prepared to live in a truck for 3-4 weeks at a time and only get 3-5 days off once you get home it is the nature of the business .
I hope this was helpful to some of the prospective drivers out there and helps to keep anyone from falling for the empty promises I was lured into.
