Arkansas CDL practice tests

Arkansas administers commercial driver licensing through the Office of Driver Services, which sits inside the Department of Finance and Administration rather than a standalone motor vehicle department. In practice this means the desk that processes your CDL paperwork is usually a State Revenue Office, the same building where vehicle registration and state taxes are handled, not a separate driver-licensing agency. That pairing is unusual: most states keep licensing apart from tax administration.

What Arkansas 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 Arkansas Office of Driver Services for the current cost.

Arkansas 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.

The exam content is federal

Arkansas does not write its own knowledge exams. They come from 49 CFR Part 383, the federal rule that governs commercial licensing in every state, so general knowledge, air brakes and the endorsement tests ask the same kind of question here as anywhere else in the country. What changes state to state is administration, not material.

Crossing borders is routine here

Arkansas borders six other states — Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma — more than most states its size. That makes the federal split between intrastate and interstate driving genuinely relevant to a lot of Arkansas commercial drivers: many routes that start inside the state end outside it within a short distance.

Passing

Each knowledge test needs 80 percent correct, under 49 CFR 383.135. On a fifty-question general knowledge exam, ten wrong answers is the limit before you fail, so broad coverage across topics matters more than perfecting any single one.

Age rules

You can drive commercially within Arkansas from 18. Given how often an Arkansas route crosses a border, the federal age floor of 21 for interstate driving, set under 49 CFR 391.11, is worth planning around from the start rather than discovering it once a job requires a route out of state.

The permit wait

Federal rule under 49 CFR 383.25 holds a commercial learner permit for at least 14 days before the skills test can be booked. That wait applies no matter which Revenue Office issued the permit, so use the time to keep working through practice questions rather than treating it as dead time.

Endorsements and hazmat

What else you need beyond general knowledge depends on the vehicle and the load: air brakes, combination vehicles, tank, doubles and triples, passenger, school bus. Hazardous materials is the one to start early, since it adds a Transportation Security Administration background check on top of the written test, running on a federal schedule separate from anything the state controls.

Before you go

Fees are not listed here. Arkansas sets and adjusts them, and a stale number found on a practice site costs the reader a wasted trip to a Revenue Office, so confirm current costs with the Office of Driver Services first. What this site gives you instead is the questions and the exact rule each one is drawn 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