Lake Cumberland CDL Training School, Inc.

Local business drives across Kentucky

Written by Editor Greg Wells

Their product goes nationwide, they have opened five branches around Kentucky, and three more are due to open soon.  This Russell County business has been on the grow since they opened in 2006, with their largest expansion coming this year.

But what they produce isn’t shipped in trucks, they drive them.

Lake Cumberland CDL Training School has partnered with the community college system and is training men and women in Elizabethtown, Middlesboro, Maysville, Ashland, and Somerset now in addition to the school they still operate in Russell Springs.

Cindi Alexander, the schools director, explained that the course is 4-weeks long and if taken at one of the community college offices it comes with college credit hours.

After a week of in-class training the students are up in the cab of the “big-rig” on the driving range and then out on the roads.

“We teach them how to handle the truck and trailer.  How to back it how to go through the gears here on the range before we take them out on the road,” Alexander said.

They have a 93 percent placement record overall, and Alexander said they’ve had as much as 97 percent placement recently as more and more trucking jobs are opening up.

“Yes, there are a lot of truckers who have been on the road who are retiring now and the companies are looking for drivers,” she explained.

She added that many of those who weren’t placed in a job already had one lined up before they came to school.

“They came to school planning to drive for their uncle or with a job driving a dump truck or a garbage truck or something,” Alexander said.

With over the road drivers making between $30,000 and 36,000 a year in their first year plus benefits like health insurance and retirement plans she said jobs are attractive.

Glen Wilham, the school’s founder and president, said the growth in the industry at large helps, but their success in teaching students the skills they need to pass their test, and solid record job placement for graduates is attributable to the instructors.

“I’m proud of what this business has accomplished.” Wilham said. “Cindi and I haven’t done this all by ourselves.  None of this would have been possible without all of our great instructors.”

Jessee Arnold, the instructor who heads up the school in Elizabethtown, retired from the Marine Corps as a truck driver and then spent years more driving over the road for companies and as an owner operator.

Wilham himself was a company driver, and then an owner operator who grew into owning a small fleet of trucks before he decided to open the school.

“Id been thinking about this, then when fuel prices went so high and then the economy went south it just seemed like a good time to start the school,” Wilham said.

Now as the other schools train students from across Kentucky the Russell Springs campus has students this week from Monticello, Columbia, Shelby County and right here in Russell Springs. 

Where they are going is as varied as where they are from.

“I was going to drive a dump truck,” said Brian Dean. “But I’ve been talking to one of the recruiters about driving a flatbed.”

Dean, a third-week student this week, said he was impressed with the pay, and since he had mostly done farm work in the past he didn’t have a large work-history so he’d be starting out on the flat-bed trucks which are generally the less attractive jobs due to the amount of physical labor often required of drivers.

Given the range of job types, and the way, “trucking gets into your blood,” Alexander said 85 percent of new drivers are still on the road 5 years after starting.

She added that established company drivers can expect to be making $50,000 to $52,000 a year, with full benefits.

“A lot of it depends on how much you want to be on the road,” Alexander explained.

As to the training she said most of those who start, finish.

“About 98 percent finish the training,” she said.

They’ve had lots of local students plus others from Ohio, Michigan even Australia and eight of those graduates have been women.

Wilham said there hasn’t been anyone who finished the school and truly wanted to pass the driving test, who has not earned their license.

He added that nearly all of those who start the classes, finish them.

“Eighty to 90 percent of the students have their tuition paid for them,” Wilham added. “Either vocational rehab or workforce development or the Kentucky Farm Workers program.”

He said that some of the programs not only-pay for the training, but will pay the students a wage while they are in training.

There are also programs where a company that prehire the student will pay the school back for the training after the student works so many months as a driver.

Alexander added that they have offered weekend classes, and are considering night classes.  With a $3,890 cash price, the classes are less expensive than many schools, but not something one is likely to do on a whim.

Wilham said there are schools charging from $4,500 to $6,000 for the classes in Kentucky and Tennessee.

There are ways to find the money for classes for most students who face issues of paying the tuition.

But there is one misconception she said has to be corrected early with many students.

“After four weeks training students take the test for their CDL,” Alexander said. “We teach them to drive and to pass their test, they become truckers out there on the road.”

Pam Holcomb has shifted gears and taken a new road

Pam Holcomb takes life on the road

By Robert Villanueva

rvillanueva@thenewsenterprise.com

Keep on truckin’ might be a vintage phrase used metaphorically for most, but for Pam Holcomb the phrase can be taken literally.

As of Aug. 3, the Rineyville resident has a Class A commercial driver’s license and is authorized to drive an 18-wheeler.

“Watch out, world, I am officially now a Class A driver,” she wrote in a Facebook post the day she earned the license.

Holcomb received her license after four weeks of instruction through the Lake Cumberland CDL Training School offered at Elizabethtown Technical and Community College.

 A few weeks prior to receiving her license, she exuded enthusiasm as she stood at a driving course in Elizabethtown preparing to go through some drills.

“I’m excited; I’m ready,” she said, in response to being asked if she was nervous about testing for a CDL.

 A sky full of gray clouds spat rain as Holcomb took turns with other students practicing drills, such as parallel parking.  In the driver’s seat of the 63-foot rig, Holcomb maneuvered the vehicle between rows of bright orange cones as her instructor, Jesse Arnold, watched.

“The cones represent cars,” Arnold said.  “If you hit a cone, you hit a car.”

 Arnold said about 25 percent of his students are women.  The course involves 160 hours of instruction, 40 in the classroom and 120 on the road. 

“Most of them enjoy the driving part, actually getting out on the road,” Arnold said of his students.  Holcomb was the only woman taking the class at the time.

Students not only learn how to drive the vehicles, they learn how to inspect them and must learn mechanics as well.

“When I walked into the classroom I didn’t know what to expect,” Holcomb said.

Long classroom hours and a lot of material were part of the deal, she said.

“It was information overload for the first week,” Holcomb said.

Her classroom instructor, James Marcum, provided the tailored instruction Holcomb needed.  Students have different instructors for the classroom and the driving drills.

“He knew I’m a visual person so he drew a lot of pictures for me,” she said.

Holcomb’s classroom efforts were not lost on her driving instructor.  Arnold called Holcomb an “outstanding” student in the classroom.

“She’s one of the very few students that aced just about everything in there,” Arnold said.

After completing the classroom instruction, Holcomb and the others took to the road, practicing drills and learning to work the 13-gear vehicles.

All that work led to the CDL that was her goal.

Having recently left an office job, Holcomb wanted to go on the road with her husband, John, who has been a truck driver for about 19 years.

“Our kids are grown, and we wanted to send more time with our son and grandson in Texas,” she said.

John and her kids – Shawn and Melanie – have been supportive, she said.

An additional reason she wanted to drive a truck, she said, is that she wanted to see more of the country.

Being married to a truck driver the experience wasn’t totally alien to her.  She sometimes accompanied John on trips, but that didn’t come in handy as much as it could have.

“When I went out with him I didn’t pay attention,” she said.

Now advice from her husband boils down to one thing.

“He would say, ‘It takes patience,’” Holcomb said.

With her new CDL, Holcomb, and her husband will be teaming up in a single truck, one being able to take over for the other at any given time. 

“I don’t know how much sleep he’ll get the first few weeks,” she said.

Prior to leaving her job to pursue the CDL, Holcomb spent 14 years in her office job, the last five in a windowless office, she said.

“Now it’s like the world is my window,” Holcomb said.

While she’s learned a lot about the ins and outs of driving and maintaining a truck, she also has gained respect for truck drivers.  She said they often are given a bad rap that’s undeserved.

Though she doesn’t have a handle yet, Holcomb might find herself using the CB radio in the truck at some point. She said she’s thought about the social aspect –or lack thereof—of being on the road.

But using the CB radio might require more training or at least more experience.

“I can’t understand what they’re saying,” Holcomb said.

And how about those truck stop diners she’s likely to encounter?

“I’m looking forward to that,” she said.

Holcomb’s first trip has taken her and her husband to California, something she said she had hoped for.

For the Rineyville resident who shifted gears in her life and got behind the wheel of her own destiny, things seemed to have turned out just about the way she planned.

“It is more of a male-dominated business, but women can do anything that men can do,” Holcomb said.

Robert Villanueva can be reached at (270) 505-1743.

MORE ABOUT PAM HOLCOMB

Town of residence: Rineyville

Town of birth: Landstuhi, Germany

Favorite movies: “Face off,”  “Con

Air,” “Double Jeopardy”

Favorite music:  “I like all kinds of

     music from Bob Seger to Eminem

                                                to Sixx AM”

Favorite books: “Follow the River” by

                                             James Alexander Thom and the

                                             Stephanie Plum series by Janet

                                             Evanovich (“She is too funny.”)

Hobbies: “I love to spend time with

My grandson, read and travel.”

Favorite song about truck driving or

                                              traveling? Not yet.