Minnesota CDL practice tests

Minnesota's commercial licensing sits inside Driver and Vehicle Services, a division of the Department of Public Safety. That framing is worth knowing going in: you are dealing with a public safety agency's licensing arm rather than a standalone motor vehicle department, which shapes how the office is organized and what else it handles alongside CDLs.

What Minnesota 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 Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services for the current cost.

Minnesota 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.

A wide state with an uneven population

Minnesota is a large state by area, and its population is heavily concentrated in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul metro area. If you live further north or in a rural county, the nearest testing location can be a genuinely longer drive than it would be for someone in the Twin Cities. It is worth confirming which DVS-affiliated office is realistically closest before you pick a date, rather than assuming the nearest big town has one.

The material is federal, wherever you sit it

None of the knowledge content is written by Minnesota. It comes from 49 CFR Part 383, the same federal rule every state works from, so studying general knowledge, air brakes, or hazardous materials here prepares you for the same exam a driver in another state would sit. The pass mark is fixed at 80 percent per section by that same federal rule, not by DVS.

Choosing your tests

General knowledge applies to everyone. From there, what you take depends on the vehicle: air brakes means the air brakes exam, and skipping it does not block you from getting a license — it adds a restriction that stops you driving anything fitted with air brakes. A trailer over ten thousand pounds means combination vehicles. On top of that, endorsements — tank, doubles and triples, passenger, school bus, hazardous materials — are only needed if the job calls for them.

Hazardous materials has a step outside the exam room: a Transportation Security Administration background check, run to a federal timeline independent of how prepared you are. Start that process as early as you can, since it is usually the slowest part of getting hazmat-endorsed, not the written test itself.

Sequencing the permit and the exams

Federal rule requires a commercial learner permit to be held 14 days before the skills test. Treat that as a window rather than a deadline: sitting the knowledge exams early in it leaves room to retake one if needed without pushing back the skills test. The two age thresholds are federal too and apply the same in Minnesota as anywhere else — 18 to drive commercially within the state, 21 to cross into another one.

No fees on this page

We deliberately leave dollar figures off this site. DVS sets and revises them, and a fee that was accurate when we wrote this could be wrong by the time you read it — worse than useless if it sends you in expecting to pay the old amount. Check current fees with DVS directly. What this page and the linked tests give you reliably is the scope of each exam and a named source for every answer.

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