Truck Driver Training News

If you want the best truck driving school in Minnesota, come to Interstate Truck Driving School.  The picture below is a truck from another school here in Minnesota (we will not tell you which one, it really does not matter).

Interstate Truck Driving School has been in business for 13 years and we have a perfect DOT safety record.  We will help you learn how to drive safely.  We have full time instructors and we have training methods that we think are a lot better than our competition.  It is our goal to keep you safe and within your comfort level while at the same time presenting you with a challange that will increase your skills.

We can’t tell you our methods here on the website because we know our competition is watching us.  Come in for a personal visit and we will show you how we are better than the rest.

For those of you that are new to the trucking industry, we want to point out things that are unique and that you may not be aware of.  As an example, trucks designed to haul semi trailers do not have license plates on the rear of the truck as do other vehicles.  The state license bureau only issues a plate for the front of a semi “tractor”. 

The license plates on semi trailers are also unique as they do not have license plate tabs that expire on a yearly basis as do other plates.  The plates for semi trailers are one time, life time plates.  For more information check out this video:

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires that any commercial vehicle (truck or trailer with a gross weight rating of 10,001 pounds or more) be inspected every 12 months.  CDL drivers need to check to make sure their trucks and trailers have been inspected before they drive on the road.  Drivers must check their vehicles as a part of their pre-trip inspection every day to make sure they are in compliance with these rules.

The inspection stickers are a specific color for each year of issue.  The state of Minnesota requires these stickers to be placed in the lower part of the drivers side of the windshield for trucks and on the drivers side front of the trailers. 

You can get direct information about these rules from the Federal website:  www.fmcsa.dot.gov  For more information check out our video:

We now have our “state of the art” driving simulator up and running.  The simulator will really help our students learn the timing of the double clutch shifting method without the stress of dealing with traffic.  Students can practice on the simulator and then apply their new skill out of the road when they have more confidence.

Interstate Truck Driving School has been in business for over ten years.  We have never had a DOT reportable collision.   

Interstate Truck Driving School is all about SAFETY!  Because we put Safety First, we do things differently than any other truck driving school in the country.  We DO NOT crash our trucks BECAUSE we have a program that is SAFER than any other.

We will keep you safe during your training, and, we will teach you how to become a safe truck driver!!!!!!

Come and visit our office in South St. Paul and see for your self what makes us different.  We are not going to let our competition know what we are doing here on our website because we know they keep tabs on us and watch what we do.  So you will have to invest the time to check us out in person and we are sure you will find it worth your time to do so. 

The National Safety Council defines defensive driving as “Driving to save lives, money, and time, in spite of the conditions around you or the actions of others.”  Driving defensively also means anticipating hazards that increase the risk of getting involved in accidents caused by others.

Following too closely (tailgating) is one of the most common mistakes made by drivers of all size of vehicles.  And tailgating is the easiest mistake to correct.  All it takes is patience.  The problem with many truck drivers is since they are paid by the mile their mind is constantly on how much they are making at any given moment.

I like to remind my students that in the course of a 20 year career they will gross over a million dollars in wages driving truck.  The younger students have 40 years to look forward to so they will gross over two million!!!!  That is a lot of money and it will all go down the toilet if you have a rear end collision.  Trucking companies are rather intolerant of drivers that rear end another vehicle and the chances are you will lose your job.

Here is cliche I thought up years ago:  Be Patient, or, become a Patient.  Your lack of patience will get you or someone else hurt.  I don’t believe a single driver makes the decision to intentionally hurt someone but a professional driver needs to make the intentional decision to drive safely at all times and maintain the proper following distance.

The accepted rule these days is about 8 seconds of time between vehicles when you are driving a big rig.  More space and time when the weather is bad.  It is difficult to maintain that distance when driving in heavy traffic.  Truck drivers need to be patient enough to drive 3 or 4 miles per hour slower than the flow of traffic to keep the proper distance in the heavy traffic.

It can be done.  I do it every day.  And Interstate Truck Driving School has a perfect DOT accident record with zero reportable collisions in the ten plus years we have been in business.  We send that message loud and clear to all of our students and hope they heed our advice.