Counter shaft transmission is a popular automatic transmission power train in construction vehicles such as wheel loader and forklift. The gear train layout of counter shaft transmission is a very basic and important development stage because it affects the most of components design including hydraulic system and shift control algorithm, etc. This paper presents a design methodology for the gear train layout from the analysis of power flow path and clutch hook-up of the existing counter shaft transmission that is adopted in commercialized construction vehicles. Also, independent constraints for the meshed gear ratios are derived in order to realize forward 4-speed and reverse 3-speed gear ratio. The layout design principle proposed here was applied to the new original counter shaft transmission that is underdevelopment.