The Institute started functioning on 10/10/1984 as an automobile research oriented institute under the auspices of the institute of Road Transport(IRT),Taramani,Chennai and the State Transport Undertakings(STUs) as per G.O.MS.No.479 of the Department of Science and Technology,dated 26/04/1984.

The Institute,unique in nature, was started with the lofty ideals of providing quality engineering to the poor and underprivileged sections of the society.

The goverment approved the reservation of 40% of the seats for the wards of STU employees, which was subsequently increased to 50%. Now the reservation has been reduced to 35% as per the Goverment of Tamilnadu orders.The institute is being run with the corpus fund created with the contribution from STU employees.

The institute started with an intake of 120 students with 30 students in each descipline.

• Automobile Engineering
• Computer Technology and Informatics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Transportion Engineering

The intake was increased from 120 to 180 from the academic year 1986-87 and 210 from 1992-93, 300 from 1994-95, 360 from 2002-03 and 420 from 2012-13. Now, the IRTT offers senven enginneering disciplines at under graduate level and three programs at the post graduate level.In addition to this,20% of the sanctioned intake in each branch is admitted in the second year B.E./B.Tech and MCA programs through the lateral entry scheme.

The Transportion Engineering branch was renamed as Civil Engineering in 1990-91. The Computer Technology and Informatics branch was renamed as Computer Science and Engineering in 1995 and the intake was increased to 45 and subsequently to 60. The Electronic and Communication Engineering branch was Started in 1986-87 with an intake of 30, which was subsequently increased to 45 in 1992-93 and later on to 60. The Electrical and Electronics Engineering branch was started in 1994-95 and the Information Technology branch in 2002-03 with an intake of 30 and subsequently increased to 60 in 2000-01. M.E.(Structrual Engineering) was started in 2003-04 with a sanctioned intake of 18. The intake in Civil and Automobile Engineering Branches has been increased from 18 to 24 from the academic year 2014-15 with an intake of 24 students and M.E(Structural Engineering) has been increased to 30.

In 2021, the college was transferred to under the governance of Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE) and subsequently renamed as Government College of Engineering, Erode. It is a premier Government Engineering College affiliated to Anna University, Chennai. The Institute is located on a sprawling lush green campus of 200 acres between Chithode and Bhavani in Erode district.This Institute is functioning as the Zonal Headquarters for Zone-XI (Erode Zone) of Anna University monitoring the Engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University in Erode district and part of Namakkal, Tiruppur and Salem districts