Things To Do Before Trucking School

Hello everyone, What some things you wish someone told you before you went to trucking school? I start trucking school in a month and was wondering what to study next to get a head start, and anything that would be helpful that you wished someone would have told you. I want to keep learning so I don't get stale. Thank for yall's help.

Hi Brian

The first thing I would do is to start studying “the high road” program that this site provides for free.

2nd thing to get a leg up and make your schooling less stressful is to study the pretrip and get familiar with the parts of the truck. This site provides a pretty good pretrip inspection that one of the members created. I’m sure someone else will link it shortly .

https://youtube.com/@Ms.Abbott

This lady has a few videos on pretrip that should fall in line with whatever your school will teach you.

Good luck!

Brian, I went to school at Schneider. The recruiter provided a list of what to bring to training. I added a few things of my own, but I can’t think of anything I needed that wasn’t on the list or that wasn’t just a common sense item. See if your company has a list of what to bring.

Becoming A Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Truck Driving

• Truck Driver's Career Guide
• Brett's Book: The Raw Truth About Trucking (free online version)
• High Road CDL Training Program
• CDL Practice Tests

High Road CDL Training Program

• CDL Practice Tests
• High Road Practice Questions
• Android App: CDL Practice Tests

Get your permit, endorsements, and anything else you want (twic) before even starting school. Seriously. Now, your school may be different, but I showed up day one having already gotten everything I could on my own time, so when the instructor sat us down and told us the first week would be studying to take the permit test at the end of the week, I raised my hand and asked what I could do. He was tickled at my initiative and sent me out to start driving with another instructor. I got a full week of one on one time driving before anyone else even touched touched the truck. I struggled with shifting something awful, so since we had three classes a day, I asked if I could ride around with the other two classes. The instructor thought that was great, and while I could just sit and listen so I wouldn't take any instruction away from the other students, I soaked up a ton of additional instruction, plus had the added benefit of when a student called in, I took his place behind the wheel. I literally spent twelve hours a day with the instructors, and by the time the road test came around, I had more than twice the time behind the wheel of any other student. Also, this site at the time had a great section on learning logs, so knowing that could be a potential hang up for me, I studied that daily, did every exercise multiple times, and would actually engage with my instructors about real world logging examples. Every one of those guys loved sharing every nugget of wisdom they had.

Now, that advice mileage may vary, but I've always been successful showing as much initiative as I possibly can, and being stubborn enough that nothing will stop me from reaching a goal.

Thanks for all your help I already have my permit and got some more instructions from employer. FMCSA setup. Andhe78. I am looking to get a head start like you were doing also. That is why I was asking about any about anything you wish you were told before going to trucking school. Thanks for all your help.

In one of my diaries I lined out what all I needed to do before starting school, but in a nutshell. Get your personal life squared away. Finances, relationships, housing, cars and stuff squared away.

Eliminate all areas of stress so that you can concentrate fully on learning and being successful.

Thanks Davy A. Those are the reminders that I was looking for. Thank you.