Pre-Trip Inspection Test...Any Tips/Advice?

Hello all,

I'm currently in CDL school. The pre trip inspection test has me a bit nervous. That's a lot to remember!

Any tips for studying it? What did you do to learn it and memorize it in school?

Thanks for any help in advance!

Pelican

Repetition. Then repeat. Then do that again. Again and again.

If you're not dreaming about the pre-trip each night, you need to study more.

Flash cards by category like

Tires (on front of card) On the back of the card have all the things you would look for.

1. Psi 100 or manufacturers specs 2. No cuts, bulging or flat spots 3. 4/32nds of tread on steers 2/32nds on other tires 4. No recaps on steers 5. Nothing stuck between duel tires.

All that fun stuff for all your categories.

Repetition. Then repeat. Then do that again. Again and again.

If you're not dreaming about the pre-trip each night, you need to study more.

This.

Follow the same pattern every time. Building that muscle memory is key.

Use the actual truck as your “cue card”. Learn to walk around the truck and let what you see trigger your memory.

Get out to a truck with some other students and walk around the truck until you have it down pat.

Like PackRat and Turtle have already said: “Repetition is the Mother of Retention “.

Y'all are awesome. All great advice. Thanks.

PS. Backing is hard! LOL

Of course it's only my first week

Y'all are awesome. All great advice. Thanks.

PS. Backing is hard! LOL

Of course it's only my first week

Backing up is easy. LEARNING to back up is hard! Lol. Just be patient with yourself because it happens to everyone. I’ve been “learning” for almost 2 years and I’m still honing my backing skills.

Continual repetition. Find a method of information retention that works best for you and then just hit it over and over again. You really want to reach a point that you can't go to sleep without your pre-trip spiel running through your mind.

Repetition. Then repeat. Then do that again. Again and again.

If you're not dreaming about the pre-trip each night, you need to study more.

Hello Pellican. Im in CDL school for my fourth day now. Man, Definitely we should take PackRat's advice...If you're not dreaming about pre-trip, we need to study harder! I unfortunately get woken up dreaming about it. Thought something was wrong with me. Good luck Sir ! Jason T. L.I., New York

Flash cards by category like

Tires (on front of card) On the back of the card have all the things you would look for.

1. Psi 100 or manufacturers specs 2. No cuts, bulging or flat spots 3. 4/32nds of tread on steers 2/32nds on other tires 4. No recaps on steers 5. Nothing stuck between duel tires.

All that fun stuff for all your categories.

I second the flash cards. Do them however you want but I made them in the order I would encounter them in my actual pretrip test and I read through them out loud every morning and every night before bed and then practiced them whenever I had a chance.

I had my pretrip down solid in a week and aced it on my test. Repetition, especially right before bed, helped a ton for me.

I also strongly agree with BK about using the visual cues on the truck. I still do this years later. My best inspections are the ones where I just stand back after going through the official pretrip stuff and just look at the truck to see if I missed anything. I’ve found bizarre things that I never noticed before when I just sit back and look everything over like a normal person.

On the official exam I recommend just stopping for a moment after each section and looking over everything to see if you missed something before going on to the next section.