I signed up to learn truck driving for class B vehicles. I paid several thousand dollars for the two week course. During that time I learned very little in the classroom and had to buy my own Federal Safety Regulations book. I spent most of my time with a few other class B students and a lot of class A students, in a mixed class.
Outside, instructors dealt with an overload of class A students, (About 15 of them per one to two instructors, at any given time). We class B people usually had either no instructor or occasionally one, for a very short period. Students practised backing up the school's only class B truck a short distance and doing the pre-trip inspection - usually unsupervised. We did this using paperwork that was outdated, being designed for a different truck. The truck itself was auto-transmission, so you didn't learn how to shift gears manually.
Students essentially teach themselves most of what they have to know to pass the DMV examiner's testing. I actually drove the truck on the road one time, due to lack of instructors. Whenever the school's (only) class B truck was needed at the DMV test sight, we had NO truck to practise on. We just stood around and talked.
You can get your class B CDL this way - I did on my first try - but was this "training" worth $3,000? Absolutely not!
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