Louisiana CDL practice tests

Louisiana licenses commercial drivers through the Office of Motor Vehicles, which sits inside the Department of Public Safety and Corrections rather than a transportation agency. Licensing and law enforcement share a department here, which is a different pairing to the "DMV under Revenue" or "DMV under DOT" setups you'll find in a lot of other states.

What Louisiana 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 Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles for the current cost.

Louisiana 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 Louisiana does differently

The knowledge exams themselves come from federal rule, not state rule: 49 CFR Part 383 sets what's asked and what counts as a pass, and that's identical whether you test in Louisiana or somewhere else entirely. Louisiana's own quirk is administrative rather than technical — the state is divided into parishes instead of counties, so paperwork, addresses and directions to a testing office may use parish names you won't find on a general map of the US, which is worth knowing before you go searching for a county that doesn't exist here.

The state's freight economy runs heavily along the Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where petrochemical plants and port traffic keep a steady demand for commercial drivers. A lot of that work is genuinely local — moving loads between plants, terminals and the port itself — which is exactly the kind of driving the intrastate age rule covers, letting 18-year-olds work commercially within Louisiana three years before they're old enough to cross a state line with a load.

Which tests you actually need

General knowledge applies to everyone. What follows depends on what you'll drive: air brakes carry their own exam, and a fail there doesn't stop you getting licensed, it just restricts you from driving anything fitted with them. Combination vehicles come in once you're towing over 10,000 pounds. Endorsements sit on top of that — tank, doubles and triples, hazardous materials, passenger, school bus.

Hazardous materials needs more lead time than the rest. It adds a Transportation Security Administration background check to the written exam, and that check runs on its own clock, so get it started well before you expect to need it.

Before you book

A commercial learner permit has to come first, and federal rule sets a 14-day minimum hold on it before the skills test can happen. Sit the knowledge exams early in that fortnight rather than late, so you've still got room to resit one if you need to.

We leave fees off this page on purpose. Louisiana sets and changes them, and a number we haven't kept current does you more harm than good, so check with the Office of Motor Vehicles before you travel. What we give you instead is the exam content itself, and exactly where each answer is sourced from, so you know precisely what to expect before you walk into the testing office.

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