Arlington's closest top-rated Class A CDL training — about a 20 minute drive south in Mansfield. The highest rated CDL school in DFW, with on-site skills testing, 926 five-star reviews, and a 97% first-time pass rate.
Call Now · Real People Answer 817-864-8086If you live in Arlington and you're ready to start a truck-driving career, you don't have to settle for a crowded chain school or a daily haul across the Metroplex. Advance Career Education sits just south of the Arlington city line in Mansfield, at 950 Trinity Drive — depending on which side of town you start from, that's roughly 8 to 15 miles and about 20 minutes in normal traffic. We pull students from every corner of Arlington, plus Pantego and Dalworthington Gardens.
What you get for that short drive is the highest rated CDL school in the entire DFW area — 926 five-star Google reviews, a number no other school near Arlington can touch. We're a CVTA member school (an association only top-tier schools are accepted into), a Licensed Third-Party Testing facility, TWC approved, and listed on the FMCSA Training Provider Registry. Translation: you're trained legally, to the real standard, by people who do this right.
What we teach is Class A — the license behind the tractor-trailers moving on I-20, I-30 and SH-360 through Arlington every hour of the day. That focus is deliberate: Class B and school bus training are coming soon and currently waitlist-only, so the whole yard, fleet and instructor roster point at one job — getting Arlington students through a Class A skills test and into a truck.
Something most Arlington students don't find out until they start looking for a test date: booking the skills test through the state can be the slowest part of the whole process. Most Texas DPS offices do not administer the commercial skills test at all, and the ones that do book out by appointment.
So an Arlington student testing through the state waits for whatever slot opens — and the drive was never really the problem. Availability is. Skills-test slots are limited and appointment-only, so the open date on the calendar is the bottleneck, not the mileage.
ACE is a Licensed Third-Party Testing facility, so none of that is your problem. Your skills test happens at 950 Trinity Drive, on the same concrete pads and in the same truck you trained in — no state appointment to hunt down, and no first look at an unfamiliar range on the morning that actually counts. For an Arlington student the whole process collapses to one address. (Worth knowing: this only affects the skills test. The rest of the commercial license paperwork — knowledge testing, renewals, duplicates, address changes — still runs through DPS the usual way.)
A CDL is only as good as the truck you learned on. At ACE, Arlington students train on a real, modern fleet on concrete pads — the same surfaces and conditions you'll face on the job — so nothing about your first day at work is a surprise.
Most schools teach the bare minimum to pass the test. We train you for the job. That's why ACE graduates from Arlington show up to work day one already backing into tight spaces, docking cleanly, and handling whatever truck they're handed. See the full Class A programs →
Arlington is crossed by more freight infrastructure than almost any city its size. I-30 runs the north side — the original Dallas–Fort Worth Turnpike. I-20 runs the south side. State Highway 360 runs the east side, and the 360 Tollway carries that corridor further south through Grand Prairie and Mansfield to US-287. US-287 itself clips southeast Arlington with an interchange at Sublett Road, and Spur 303 and Division Street carry the surface traffic in between. If you've driven Arlington, you've already driven the roads you'll be dispatched on.
Along SH-360 between the two interstates sits the Great Southwest Industrial District, the long-established warehouse belt shared with Grand Prairie — wall-to-wall third-party logistics, consumer-goods and distribution space. A driver who lives in Arlington is already inside that market — no relocation, no hour of deadhead just to reach the freight. And because the city sits between the two downtowns, you can work either side: the SH-360 corridor toward Dallas, or the I-35W and Fort Worth side.
There's heavy manufacturing on the east side of town as well, out toward SH-360 and Division Street, with the supplier and logistics yards that grow up around a plant. Operations like that never stop moving parts in and finished product out, and the sequenced, just-in-time runs that feed them are local Class A driving — the kind of work you go home from at night instead of sleeping in the truck.
Meanwhile the Southeast Connector rebuild has I-20, I-820 and US-287 torn up across the south and east side of town, and it will be that way for years yet. Every Arlington driver knows that work zone. Putting a tractor-trailer through shifting lanes, narrowed shoulders and concrete barrier isn't a hypothetical around here. It's the commute.
It's four steps, in order, and there are no shortcuts around any of them. You start with the commercial learner permit — DPS knowledge testing and a DOT physical, in hand before you take a truck onto a public road. Then entry-level driver training from a provider listed on the FMCSA Training Provider Registry; that's federal law, not a preference, and a school that isn't on the registry cannot legally put you in front of a skills examiner. ACE is on it. Then the behind-the-wheel hours, range work until the maneuvers are muscle memory and then public roads. Then the skills test: pre-trip inspection, basic control, road drive.
Most students finish in about 3 to 4 weeks, and Arlington students do all four steps at a single address, because ACE administers the permit testing and the licensed third-party skills test on the same campus where the training happens. Want the long version? How to get a CDL in Texas, step by step — and if you're already thinking about hazmat, tanker or doubles and triples, start with the Texas CDL endorsements guide.
Cost is the first thing almost every Arlington caller asks about, and the honest answer is that plenty of our students never write us a tuition check at all. ACE is TWC approved, and Texas Workforce Commission workforce-grant funding can cover the program for students who qualify — which for a lot of Arlington residents means $0 out of pocket.
The part worth reading twice is what we don't ask for in return. There is no carrier employment contract. You aren't signing away a year of your working life to one trucking company in exchange for training, and you aren't on the hook to pay tuition back if the job turns out to be wrong for you. You take your Class A and go work for whoever you want — a Great Southwest warehouse, a Fort Worth-side carrier, over-the-road, or whichever local outfit pays best that month.
Eligibility depends on your situation, and it's a five-minute phone call rather than a form. Call 817-864-8086 and we'll tell you straight — or read the full breakdown of what CDL training costs in Texas first.
A lot of our Arlington students come to us already working — at the plant, in a warehouse off SH-360, on a dock in the Great Southwest district. You don't have to quit to get licensed. ACE runs evening classes alongside day classes, with the same instructors, the same trucks, the same curriculum and the same on-campus permit and skills testing. A shift ends in Arlington and about twenty minutes later you're on the pad.
We deliberately don't post class times or start dates here — they move, and we'd rather give you the real answer than let you plan around a stale one. Call 817-864-8086 for current start dates, and a person will pick up.
There are three clean ways south out of Arlington, and which one you want depends on where you sleep, not on the map.
From downtown, UT Arlington and the middle of town: FM 157. You know it as North Collins Street, then Division Street, then South Cooper Street — past the university, the stadiums, The Parks Mall and Arlington Highlands. Once it crosses the city line it simply becomes North Main Street in Mansfield. No highway required. About 10 miles from the I-20 and Cooper area; closer to 15 from City Hall.
From north and east Arlington: SH-360. The Entertainment District, the I-30 corridor and the east side near Green Oaks all feed the 360 Tollway, which runs south to Heritage Parkway — and Heritage connects to US-287 right in the Trinity Drive area. Roughly 14 miles from east Arlington, about 19 from the Entertainment District.
From far south Arlington: Matlock Road. The shortest line on the map — Matlock south into East Debbie Lane and East Broad Street, about 8 miles from Matlock and Sublett.
Call it about 20 minutes from the south side and closer to 25 from the north. 950 Trinity Drive, Mansfield, TX 76063, in the commerce district off US-287 and Heritage Parkway. Plenty of parking, and you don't need an appointment to come look at the trucks.
Arlington isn't the only city we draw from. If you're closer to another edge of the Metroplex, we've written up the drive, the local freight picture and the testing situation for Dallas, Fort Worth and Mansfield too. Same campus, same trucks — the answers just change with where you start.
And if you're still working out the basics, start here: what CDL training actually costs in Texas, how to get your CDL in Texas step by step, which endorsements are worth adding, and the full Class A program list.