Alabama CDL practice tests

Alabama licenses commercial drivers through the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, known as ALEA, rather than through a separate motor vehicle department. ALEA is the same agency that runs the state's highway patrol, so the office that issues your commercial learner permit and the troopers who enforce the rules on Alabama's interstates report to one command structure. That is unusual: most states split licensing and enforcement between two different agencies.

What Alabama requires

Every figure below names the document it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Passing score
80% 49 CFR Part 383, Commercial Driver's License Standards, 383.135
Minimum age (in-state driving)
18 years old 49 CFR Part 383, Commercial Driver's License Standards, 383.71
Minimum age (across state lines)
21 years old 49 CFR Part 391, Qualifications of Drivers, 391.11
Permit holding period
14 days 49 CFR Part 383, Commercial Driver's License Standards, 383.25

Fees change without notice, so we do not repeat them here. Check Alabama Law Enforcement Agency for the current cost.

Alabama practice tests

The knowledge tests are set by federal rule, so the questions are the same wherever you sit them. What changes is the paperwork above.

What the exam actually covers

None of the knowledge tests are written by Alabama itself. They are drawn from 49 CFR Part 383, the federal rule that governs commercial driver licensing everywhere in the country, so the general knowledge exam, the air brakes exam and every endorsement test ask the same kind of question whether you sit them in Mobile or in Montana. What Alabama controls is the administration: where you test, when the office is open, and how the license is finally issued once you have passed.

The pass mark and what it means

A score of 80 percent or higher passes each section, which is the federal minimum written into 49 CFR 383.135 rather than an Alabama choice. On a fifty-question general knowledge exam that leaves you ten wrong answers before you fail, so a handful of careless mistakes will not sink you, but a weak grasp of a whole topic area will.

Age rules

Alabama lets you drive commercially within the state from 18. Cross into another state on the same load and federal rule raises the minimum to 21, under 49 CFR 391.11, because interstate hauling sits under a stricter section of the same regulation. If you plan to run routes that leave Alabama, plan around the higher age, not the lower one.

The permit wait

Once ALEA issues your commercial learner permit, federal rule holds you to it for at least 14 days before you can book the skills test. That waiting period is fixed at the federal level, so there is no faster route through it, and it is worth using the time to keep working through practice questions rather than letting the permit sit idle.

Endorsements and hazmat

General knowledge is the exam everyone sits. After that, what else you need depends on the vehicle and the load: air brakes if the truck has them, combination vehicles for anything towing a heavy trailer, and separate endorsement exams for tanks, doubles and triples, passengers, school buses. Hazardous materials carries an extra step beyond the written test: a Transportation Security Administration background check, which runs on its own schedule and is worth starting early rather than leaving until the exam is booked.

Before you book with ALEA

We do not list fees on this site. Alabama sets and changes them, and a number that goes stale between our last check and your visit to a driver license office costs you nothing, but it costs you a wasted trip, so check directly with ALEA before you go. What this site gives you instead is the practice questions and the citations behind each one, so you know exactly where in the federal rule an answer comes from.

Jump to a test

Every question on every one of these is free, and each answer names the handbook page it came from.

Other states

Cited to the page, every time.

Every question names the handbook, section and page it was read from, so you can check the answer instead of taking our word for it.

How we write these