North Dakota CDL practice tests

North Dakota runs its commercial driver's license program directly through the Department of Transportation, rather than handing the work to a separate motor vehicle agency the way many states do. If you have dealt with NDDOT for a road project or a vehicle registration before, you are already dealing with the same agency that will test you.

What North Dakota 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 North Dakota Department of Transportation for the current cost.

North Dakota 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.

Distance is the thing to plan around

North Dakota is a big state with a small population spread thinly across it. That matters here in a way it would not in a small or crowded state: the office where you can sit a CDL knowledge exam may be a long drive from where you live, especially west of the Missouri River. Build that travel time into your plan rather than assuming a test slot is nearby. The oil fields in the western part of the state and the grain elevators across the rest of it both depend on a steady supply of licensed drivers, so demand for CDL holders here is real and ongoing — but that does not make the test itself any easier or shorten the drive to sit it.

The rules are federal, wherever you sit the test

Most of what is actually tested is not a North Dakota rule at all. The knowledge exams, the pass mark and the age limits are set out in 49 CFR Part 383 and apply the same way in every state in the country. You need 80 percent correct to pass each section — that is the federal floor, not something North Dakota set on its own. You can drive commercially within North Dakota at 18; crossing into Minnesota, South Dakota or Montana for work needs you to be 21.

Which tests you actually need

General knowledge is the exam everyone takes, whatever they end up driving. From there it depends on the vehicle: air brakes need a separate written exam, and if you fail it your license still comes through, just with a restriction attached that keeps you off any vehicle fitted with them. Pull a trailer heavier than ten thousand pounds and you will also need the combination vehicles exam. Beyond that sit the endorsements — tank, doubles and triples, hazardous materials, passenger, school bus — and you only take the ones your work actually needs.

Hazardous materials carries the extra step of a Transportation Security Administration background check, on top of the written test. That process runs on its own timeline, so start it early rather than leaving it until the exams are done.

Before you book

Before a skills test can even be booked you need a commercial learner permit, and federal rule holds that permit for a minimum of 14 days before the skills test can follow it. Sit your knowledge exams as soon as the permit is issued rather than waiting — a failed section then still leaves you weeks to try again before the skills test date arrives.

This site leaves fees out deliberately. North Dakota reviews them periodically, and printing last year's number here would be worse than printing nothing — it could send you to NDDOT with the wrong amount and an extra trip to make up the difference. Go straight to NDDOT for the current cost. What we focus on instead is the exam content itself: which questions come up, and the exact page in the source material behind each 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