Everything I am about to say was from 2024. I didn't leave a review out of fear of retaliation from Jennifer the office manager. After I got my license through Golden Pacific Truck School (which I highly recommend) I worked in the trucking industry and ultimately decided to leave, which is why I now feel safe to leave a review.
I am leaving 1 star because I do not recommend this school overall.
I will start with the positives. On the positive side, John and Ephrain the instructors are both great instructors. They are helpful, polite, respectful, and knowledgeable. Also on the plus side is you can spend lots of time by yourself behind the wheel practicing various backing up maneuvers. You aren't required to be there for set periods of time and you have flexible hours. The school is relatively cheap. These are the benefits of attending the school. However, there are some significant downsides. Jennifer the office manager treats half the people with a rude, inconsiderate, and impatient attitude. She treats you like another problem to be dealt with. She will laugh and joke with certain people, but if you aren't one of those people she can be unpleasant to be around and make your experience at the school a very frustrating one. As one example, the dmv truck broke down late Friday afternoon on August 16 2024 that is used to give students practice on driving. Instead of calling ahead to let me know that my drive the next day, Saturday, had been cancelled because of mechanical issues, she waited for me to show up so that she could blame me to my face for not having been there at the time that the truck broke down. She said if I had been there late Friday afternoon I would have known that the truck was broken and that my drive was cancelled. I asked her why she didn't take 2 minutes to call or text me that my drive had been cancelled and she avoided the question and just blamed me for not having been there. Keep in mind that the school advertises flexible hours and that you don't have a required set of hours you have to be there. Half the students seem to have problems with Jennifer's attitude but Jennifer's supervisor disregards anything negative she hears about Jennifer from either students or instructors.
Aside from Jennifer, the 2 trucks they use for learning how to back up have been fraught with mechanical issues for nearly the entire 4 months I have been there. There have been issues with the inside door handles not working properly, power steering issues making steering harder, issues with the clutch, issues with the AC not working, cracked windshields, mirror motors not working so you have to adust the mirrors by hand, issues with the 5th wheel not being greased properly causing steering issues and loud metal on metal friction between the 5th wheel and the trailer apron. Additionally, Jennifer has the diesel filled up only enough to last 2 days. The fuel gauge on the 2 "skills" trucks has never left the red range for the entire 4 months I have been there. So every 2 days the trucks used for "skills" aka "backing up" will run out of diesel and one of the instructors has to grab the diesel cans to go fill up at the gas station and then drive back. This leads to a loss of practice time for the students and a headache for everyone involved. You are supposed to have 10 hours of drive time to go to the dmv. I had 8 hours. On 3 days I was scheduled to drive from 9am-11am. However, the school opens at 9 and the instructors only get there at 9. So we leave between 9:10 to 9:15 each of those days. We also get back 10 minutes early each of those days because the next student is scheduled to leave at 11 am for their drive. So I lose 20-25 minutes of drive practice each of those 3 days. So I lost a minimum of 1 hour of drive practice between those 3 days. I also lost an additional hour of practice later due to poor planning by Jennifer. I never got my last hour of drive time before I went to the dmv. This is poor scheduling and poor managment of time and resources. I was so stressed going to the DMV because I knew if I failed then I would have to be around Jennifer longer. I did fail because I was so nervous and when I got back the students told me that Jennifer had told all the students who were there that I failed and she knew I would fail, which was very hurtful. When I first started at the school in March, I was told that I would be graduated in 4-6 weeks. I was there for over 5 months. Most students graduate after a minimum of 3-4 months. Only a minority of students are able to graduate within the 4-6 weeks. They did not explain the process to me. You have to pass the general knowledge test at the dmv and the air brakes knowledge test. Then you need to memorize several pages of information relating to "pre-trip" which is identifying different parts of the vehicle and saying it's not broken etc. Then you have to learn 4 different backing up maneuvers called "skills." Then you have to get your 10 hours of drive time. read more
