TORONTO – Friday, June 30 (two weeks and two days from now) will be the last chance a resident of Ontario will have to take a road test for an Ontario CDL (or A/Z, as it’s known in the province) without first taking a mandatory training training.

Good luck getting an appointment. Extended lineups were being reported more than a month ago.

After July 1, prospective drivers will have to register with one of the province’s more than 80 certified schools. The bare minimum training will involve 103 hours of training, broken down as 36.5 hours in class and 67 hours in or at the truck, with at 17 of those in the yard; 50 holding the steering wheel; with 32.5 of them on the road and 17.5 hours in the yard, backing up and doing other maneuvers.

Air brake training will add another 12 hours, minimum.

The lowest price school will be $6,000.

Ontario is the first province to make truck-driving-training obligatory. Other jurisdictions are expected to follow suit.

The switch to mandatory training will indeed be game-changing. While about 9,000 Class A road tests are delivered each year in Ontario, just 2,500 people went through a Private Career College, public college, or Ministry of Transportation-approved driver certification program in 2014.