As federal regulators crack down on hundreds of commercial driver training providers, a veteran truck driver in Georgia is launching a school he says will take a different approach — smaller classes, more time behind the wheel and a greater emphasis on preparing students for the realities of life on the road.
Shawn Gresham, founder of Trucking Life Academy in Dalton, Georgia, told FreightWaves that the problems facing commercial driver training go beyond fraudulent or noncompliant schools.
Gresham, who has driven commercially for 17 years and says he has logged more than 1 million miles, said some legitimate schools do what they are designed to do — help students obtain a commercial driver’s license — without necessarily preparing them for what comes afterward.
“Schools just help you get the license, and that’s just kind of what we got accustomed to,” Gresham said. “It was a status quo.”
Gresham said the problem became clearer after he began training drivers himself.
He recalled receiving a call from a new driver who was descending a mountain and didn’t know which gear to use. When Gresham asked where the driver’s trainer was, the driver told him the trainer was asleep.
Gresham said financial incentives at some carriers can encourage trainers to operate more like team drivers with their trainees instead of spending their time actively teaching them.
“The trainer needs to go to sleep every night and do their 10-hour break, period,” Gresham said, describing changes he implemented while overseeing trainers at Rosedale Transport. “You’re better off paying the trainer a little more money and have them actually train.”
Small classes, eight weekends
Trucking Life Academy is scheduled to open Oct. 18, pending approval from the Georgia Department of Driver Services. Gresham said the fire marshal has inspected the facility and the school was awaiting the remaining licensing process at the time of the interview.
Gresham plans to limit classes to six students and initially operate the program on weekends over eight weeks.
The school will also train students on manual-transmission trucks. Gresham said he believes learning on a manual transmission helps students better understand that operating a commercial truck is fundamentally different from driving a passenger vehicle.
Planned tuition for Trucking Life Academy’s Class A CDL program is $3,795.
Students who haven’t mastered the required skills by the end of the course will be allowed to return for additional training without being charged again, Gresham said.
“If you come here and you’re not ready, you’ll just keep going to school until you get it,” he said.
The academy is also designed to give working students an alternative to carrier-sponsored training arrangements that can require drivers to remain with an employer or repay training costs.
Gresham said the weekend schedule allows students to continue working while learning to drive.
‘It’s the whole industry’
While backing remains an obvious challenge for inexperienced drivers, Gresham said one of the biggest deficiencies he sees is harder to measure: preparing new drivers to handle the pressure of trucking.
Drivers may have to navigate heavy traffic and bad weather while dealing with fatigue, appointment times, dispatchers and long waits at loading docks.
“It’s not just about textbook,” Gresham said.
He said schools can teach students backing maneuvers, but drivers also need to know how to remain composed when traffic, weather, fatigue and pressure from dispatchers converge.
“That there, I think, is something that’s not mandated in schools,” Gresham said.
He also wants students to learn how to communicate with dispatchers, brokers and safety departments and how to recognize situations in which operational pressure conflicts with safe driving.
Gresham said improving CDL education therefore can’t fall solely on schools.
“Yes, it’s schools, but it’s the whole industry,” he said.
Drivers help build the school
Trucking Life Academy has developed largely through donations from drivers and businesses, according to Gresham.
He said two trucks and a trailer were donated to the school, while drivers and supporters have contributed other equipment and supplies. Some drivers have also sponsored tuition for students who otherwise couldn’t afford the program.
Gresham said one donated truck came from a Dalton-area diesel business whose owner had encountered poorly prepared drivers through his towing work.
Another truck, a 2014 Freightliner, was donated by an owner-operator whom Gresham had previously trained. A supporter paid the fuel costs to bring the truck from Florida, while a Dalton leasing business donated a trailer, Gresham said.
Gresham said the academy’s low overhead makes it possible to keep class sizes small and give students additional training when needed.
He said he previously considered outside investment but walked away after concluding the economics would require moving larger numbers of students through the program more quickly than he wanted.
Related: DOT shuts down 110 truck driving schools in CDL fraud crackdown
Gresham calls for closer scrutiny of instructors
Asked what he would change about CDL training if he could make recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Gresham pointed to instructors.
“I would recommend that the instructors have a good record, a clean record,” he said. “If a driver’s had suspensions and he’s had wrecks and he doesn’t have a clean record, then how are you having [him] teach the next generation of drivers?”
Gresham also favors requirements that prevent schools from attempting to train large numbers of students with too few trucks or inadequate training facilities.
He described one driver he later trained who told him that his previous CDL school had 17 students sharing one truck. According to Gresham, the driver would arrive at 5 a.m., wait much of the day and receive only two 30-minute opportunities to practice backing.
“But as long as he was there in line, paid his $5,000, he got the test and got his license,” Gresham said.
For Gresham, the federal scrutiny of CDL schools represents an opportunity to reconsider not only who is authorized to train commercial drivers, but what happens between earning a CDL and becoming a competent professional driver.
“We’ve got to get back to the focus of making sure that driver succeeds,” he said.
Why it matters: Federal enforcement may remove fraudulent CDL schools, but Gresham’s experience highlights a harder safety question: whether drivers graduating from compliant programs are receiving enough practical preparation to operate safely.
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