Business ProfileforApex CDL Institute

You should think twice, even 3 or 4 times before attending this school. I just graduated the first of Nov. 2021 and this is my experience. Despite their own advertising, their Catalog, and the details painted all over their trucks as being a ********************* they will tell you day one (only after they have your $5000), they are not a ********************* They are only a "Get Your CDL" School). Over the 4 weeks I was there, I probably had 3 hours of seat time in any truck. But I had 2 full days of watching videos and U-Tube videos directly from the internet (everybody has access), only one video was by APEX. The facility is cold; minimum heat. All the trucks used for week 2 and week 3 training are broken, run down, and not road worthy. The seats are all broken, the seat itself is half-gone. Seat belt does not work. Mirrors are loose and vibrate to the point you have to reach out and hold them just to see. One truck you have to start with a screwdriver. All the tires are bald. The inside door handles don't even work. You have to wait for someone to open the door for you. One truck was not even running for close to 3 weeks. So we were left with only one truck to use for training for 12 people. To make it worse, the instructors kept telling us it was going to be fixed today, and today, and today. The training lots are not maintained. The asphalt is gone in several places. The lines that they use on the lot to train and test you, are so faded that you can't see them from inside the trucks. I asked an instructor if we could get the lines painted, he said he would, but he never did. The only shelter on the training lots is an OPEN car-port. They don't even have simple tarps up to protect you from the rain and wind. We had to provide our own wood to try to stay warm with an old wood stove. Instructors on Lot 1 said we could not use the stove unless it was 20 degrees out. REMINDER - THEY CHARGE $5000 A PERSON AND HAVE 12 NEW PEOPLE EVERY WEEK, SO ONLY $270,000 A MONTH. Point being; the money is not going towards helping the students have a good, comfortable, safe experience.Yard 1 instructors spend more time bantering between themselves so much it is a waste of our time, and it becomes uncomfortable. Ask 4 different Instructors the same question and you will get 4 different answers. Their Catalog is full of grammatical errors and lies. It states incorrect information that they say they will provide and/or do for your training. It never happens or gets done. My class spent over 6 hours on one day doing nothing (in the cold) because they did not have an instructor or truck for us. So, while we are not getting much seat time in a truck, receiving conflicting training information, missing many hours of ANY training just standing around, they will be happy to make us sit and listen to Reps talk about their company. They do not even have enough places for the students to sit. You should take note that the only Reps you are listening to, are the ones that have LOANED APEX their road trucks to use for our training. They obviously get the only access to their students. With hundreds of Trucking companies around, they only present us with 4 companies. All must have a quid pro quo standing with APEX, despite the ***S" spiel that **** (the owner/education director) provides you on the first day. Don't buy into his c*** Don't dare mention anything about anything mentioned above to ****. I did, and he went from listening to yelling at me in 3 seconds. Interestingly, I had not even made my point yet. He has the personality of an angry rock. For 3.5 weeks, he never even interacted or said Hi to anyone in our class. This is the Education Director of APEX. However, there are a few good instructors that made it bearable and funny at times. Shout-out to ****** ****** ****, ***** and *****. I would suggest looking for another ********************* I made it thru, but it would have been nice if management had made an attempt, any attempt, to treat us students with respect and not cattle.

********************, we are sorry we did not meet your expectations. Your review is so full of inaccuracies and untruths that it would be very difficult to rebut every one of them. I will simply let your success through the program and the fact that you graduated and took and passed your CDL exam on your first attempt speak for itself. Our training program and methodologies work and the thousands of satisfied students we have trained and placed with meaningful jobs prove that. Of course, no one can make everyone happy despite how hard we try.Our communication broke down when you came into my office and presented me with our enrollment agreement and our catalog and complained that we were not serving you bottled water in the training yard.....despite having a filtered water machine available to you no more than 10 feet from where you were sitting. Trying to manage a facility with 14 employees, 12 trucks and over ************************************************************************************************************************************************************** the winter when it is 20 degrees outside. We are an adult training school that would rather focus our resources in the areas that matter, successfully training students to get their CDL and placing them with the best paying trucking companies in the Midwest. In the year you graduated, we successfully trained and graduated almost 600 new drivers with a 100 percent successful job placement program.We provide shelter and heat during the winter. We are truck drivers, and a large part of our job is being able to function in uncomfortable weather. Proper attire and gear make the winter months possible in ***********. Unfortunately truck driving needs to be done outdoors, so does your training. If functioning in cold weather is impossible for a student, we suggest they take their training during summer months and move to a warmer climate.Regarding your statement that we are not a truck driving school. If by that you mean that we do not teach you how to be a professional truck driver knowing all aspects of trucking, then yes, of course. You were only in our program for four weeks. Teaching you a skill that takes years to develop in a four-week period would be impossible and implying that we could, would be a lie. No school in the country teaches you how to be a truck driver. Truck drivers take years to develop the skills it takes to be a truck driver. The job of a truck driver is so much more than just driving a truck. That coupled with the fact that no truck driving job is the same and we have no idea of knowing what job you want to pursue after graduation, it is impossible to teach you all aspects of becoming a truck driver. The job of a CDL school is to teach you the skills to pass the CDL test and to get you a job with a trucking company.In that regard we excelled. You took and passed your CDL on your first attempt. You graduated from our program with a 99% grade point average. If that is not proof enough of our training programs efficacy, I do not know what is. It seems disingenuous to graduate a school that obviously gave you the tools required to succeed in the program, just to turn around and complain about how poorly we did it.Our training lots are over 3 acres, **** of which is solid concrete. You will not find a bigger and better lot at any private school in the Midwest.The trucking companies we allow to recruit on our property are the best student training companies in the country. Yes, we only allow 4 to take up student time recruiting. If we let every trucking company that wanted to recruit here on the property, students would be listening to recruiters all day instead of training. Of the 4 we allow on our property, 2 donate trucks to allow students to train in state-of-the-art equipment that is relevant to the equipment they point you in upon graduation. We have hundreds of companies attempting to buy their way on to our property, but we do not allow them because they do not meet our standards of excellence. The companies that donate trucks to our program do so as advertising to students, there is no quid pro quo taking place.With all that said, we hope that you're putting your training to good use and that your new career is serving you well.