- Based Washington, USA
- Role Founder · WMST
- Discipline Two & Three Wheel
- Channel @themotochap101
The path
behind the badge.
Christopher Johnson learned to ride on British roads and learned to teach on American ones. Three decades later, that bridge — between European discipline and Pacific Northwest enterprise — defines everything that carries the Motochap name.
His earliest professional driving years were spent at the wheel of heavy goods vehicles, running long-haul and metropolitan freight across major European cities from 1991 to 2001. In parallel, he served in the British Army Reserve, certified in military transport including hazardous materials and explosives handling. The combination produced the operating mindset that still shapes his teaching today — procedures matter, but the human behind the controls matters more.
By 2002 he was a Driving Assessor and Fleet Risk Development Lead at TNT Express in the United Kingdom — assessing hundreds of commercial drivers across motorcycle, passenger, and heavy goods fleets. The work contributed to a documented cost-avoidance program exceeding £5 million in a single year. The same year, he earned an Advanced Driver Certification from the Institute of Advanced Motorists.
“Procedures matter — but the human behind the controls matters more.”
A move to the United States in 2005 brought a different kind of seat — operating 75-foot lowboy trailers across metropolitan Seattle for Hertz Equipment Rental, transporting machinery up to 56,000 pounds. Then, in 2008, he earned his MSF certification as a Two-Wheel Instructor — the credential that opened the next chapter.
In 2009, Christopher founded Washington Motorcycle Safety Training (WMST) after securing the Washington State Department of Licensing motorcycle training contract. What began as a single contract grew into the largest motorcycle training organization in the state. WMST now operates eight statewide locations, fields more than sixty certified instructors and three department managers, maintains a fleet of over 150 motorcycles, and trains more than 6,000 motorcycle students annually. Under state authorization, his teams conduct roughly 3,000 motorcycle knowledge and skills examinations every year.
In 2013 he founded WMST Drive School, a state-certified driver education division that has since trained more than 1,500 student drivers annually and administered approximately 2,000 knowledge and skills tests each year. As a Washington State Certified Driving Instructor and State-Certified Instructor Trainer, Christopher is also responsible for developing the next generation of WMST educators.
Beyond the organization he built, he continues to teach as a certified instructor with the Yamaha Champions Riding School — one of the most respected high-performance riding programs in North America — and provides one-on-one performance coaching to a MotoAmerica AMA Pro athlete (2022 — present).
The Motochap is the public-facing chapter of all of this. On YouTube (@themotochap101), Christopher does what he's spent his career doing in person — entertaining, educating, and inspiring riders of every level. It's a channel built by someone who actually does the work, every day, with a real organization behind him.