How to Start a Trucking School

trucks

If you are a truck driver but you don't want to spend your life on the road, you could devote yourself to training the next generation of drivers. With a truck driving school, you will be providing a valuable service while also earning a sizable income. Of course, getting any business off the ground is going to be challenge. You'll need to find students and learn a great deal about the requirements for getting a Commercial Driver's License (CDL) before you can open your doors. Remember that if you don't do a good job training, your students you won't be in business long.

Instructions

1. Find a location. While this is a golden rule for starting any business, it could be more important for starting a trucking school because you're going to need plenty of room. Since drivers are going to need to practice driving a semi truck hands-on, you need to have a large, safe area where they can get that experience before heading onto the roads. A student driver placard is not something you want to see on the back of an 18-wheeler on the highway.

2. Acquire trucks. You may already have one truck (your own), but if you plan to have a decent size class at your school, you may want to invest in more than one truck. The good news is that you may be able to make deals with truck brokers or the other instructors you hire to bring their trucks along for student use. Of course, using your own trucks is a bit risky because student drivers can have accidents even in controlled environments. Once your trucking school starts making money, purchasing your own student versions might be advisable.

3. Get insurance. As a trucking school, you're going to need two types of insurance in most states. First, you'll need to have insurance as a business. This would be true no matter what type of business you opened and it would protect you in case the students, instructors or even visitors were injured during a visit. You'll also need to insure the trucks. Even if you already have personal insurance on them, you need to provide further protection in case the students driving them are injured or in the event they hurt another driver on the road.

4. Develop a curriculum. If you've had truck driving experience, you probably have a good idea of what needs to be taught to incoming students. However, you now need to put that down on paper in the form of a curriculum. You'll need to divide up the information into courses and into a progression of steps the driver must follow. One way to approach this task is by seeing what other trucking schools offer. You can get some great ideas from your competition.

5. Hire instructors. Find like-minded truckers who wouldn't mind settling into a more home-based career for a while and put them to work as your instructors. You can either network through your own networks in the industry or advertise. Make sure the instructor you hire has significant experience driving long-haul so they can bring that knowledge to the classroom.

Tips & Warnings

• Grow your school with feedback from your students to see what they could use to make their learning experience even better.