Question:
This is the name of the course offered at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, WI. Yes after almost a full year, and the winter practically over, Roehl sent me to skid pad.
First and foremost I would have to recommend this course to everyone, including all of the salty road vets out there. There are very few times that you will be able to do these types of manuevers in a controlled environment. The cost is $100 as far as I know. They have truck parking on campus right next to the range. So you can come in with your tractor and trailor. The course is approximately 8 hours long. The first 2-3 hours is class room, the rest is time spent out on the range. You run through several real world exercises. You generally will start out at a low speed of around 15mph. Each time you complete the exercise you increase your speed by 2mph. You will see that each time it becomes more difficult to maintain control. For me and most of the other drivers it seemed we hit a wall when we tried 25mph. At just 2mph less you had control, but just that little increase in speed made all of the difference. You can have someone tell you that until you are blue in the face, but until you are at the wheel and see it for your self it does not hit home as hard.
On a side note and a little bit of a personal victory of sorts. I was the only driver to do something, that I hope to never repeat on the real road. While doing an exercise in a combination vehicle with ABS working on the tractor but NOT on the trailor I did over a full 360 spin!!! As I was starting to jack knife the trailor, I became fixated in the mirrors watching the trailor, something they told us to avoid and to watch out for in class. Well by the time I looked back up, only seemed like a split second, I was already 180 degrees into the spin. Somehow I managed to get out of the jack knife, but the cintrifgal (sp) force kept that tractor and trailor spinning. The other students there asked how I got the entire unit to spin, seems they had tried to do it and were not "successful". I just shrugged my shoulders. At that point I was not going to admit that I did not do it on purpose
I was very impressed with my day in Appleton. There were some minor issues with the equipment, but overall I would recomened it to everyone. I was also impressed with the range that they had for their CDL program at the campus. It was complete with a working intersection and an onramp from what I could see. It also appeared that they had a set of doubles and a tanker at the range for the students going to get their CDL.

Answer:
It sounds fabulous. What a great facility. $100 for a full day? I'd jump at the chance to pay $100 for that.
I'm curious though -- did you say you performed an unconcrolled 360+ spin in YOUR truck.
I guess to protect my hide, I might want to do trick driving in their truck.

Answer:
That is the CDL school I went to, and the skidpad was part of the training. It was terrific! I was amazed at how much difference a little bit of speed can make in handling those conditions. It also teaches you just how nearly out of control most people are in rain and snow. And yes, they use their own rigs for the skidpad - not your company rig. They are equipped with tethers so you can't actually jacknife a trailer all the way - just enough to lose control of it. They also do the same excersizes in a bobtail rig. When I was there they used all single screw day cabs - the shorter wheelbase makes things happen faster. Really great training - take it if you ever get the chance!
PP