How to get your CDL in Texas (2026)
Getting a CDL in Texas follows the federal steps every state uses: a DOT medical card, the knowledge tests for a learner permit, at least 14 days with the permit, entry-level driver training, and the three-part skills test. Texas Department of Public Safety runs the tests and publishes the manual they are written from.
- Skills test: Texas gives the modernized skills test, since September 1, 2024.
- Checklist on the pre-trip: Yes. You may use a blank checklist as a memory aid during the vehicle inspection.
- Texas’s manual adds rules of its own beyond the national model.
What the Texas manual says about the tests
- Texas moved every test site to the modernized skills test, completed September 1, 2024.
- The modernized test includes a blank pre-trip checklist you may use as a memory aid, printed in the updated CDL handbook.
- DPS publishes the handbook (DL-7C), a modernized supplement (DL-7CM) and a Spanish handbook (DL-7CS).
The steps in Texas
- Choose your class (most truck drivers get Class A) and any endorsements.
- Be 21 to drive across state lines. Whether 18 to 20 year olds can drive within Texas is in the state manual.
- Get a DOT medical card from an examiner on the FMCSA National Registry.
- Pass Texas’s knowledge tests and get your commercial learner’s permit.
- Hold the permit at least 14 days.
- Finish entry-level driver training with a registered provider.
- Pass the skills test: vehicle inspection, basic control skills, road test.
Each step in detail, with what to expect: how to get your CDL. Fees, forms and offices are in the Texas CDL manual published by Texas Department of Public Safety.
What Texas does its own way
- Skills test version: the modernized skills test, since September 1, 2024.
- Checklist during the pre-trip: Yes. You may use a blank checklist as a memory aid during the vehicle inspection.
- Low air warning in the pre-trip inspection (skills test): Usually before 55 psi (the AAMVA model). Confirm in the Texas manual.
- Trailers with a gross weight over 4,500 pounds and not exceeding 15,000 pounds operated at 30 mph or less are not required to be equipped with brakes; above 30 mph they must have brakes on both rear-axle wheels.
- If the trailer and combination exceed 3,000 pounds, the combination must be able to stop within 50 feet when traveling 20 mph.
The Texas manual has more rules of its own, with practice questions for each, in the app. Some national questions also have a different answer in this state.
Everything above, chapter by chapter: the Texas CDL manual guide. Practice for Texas’s tests: Texas CDL practice test.
Not in Texas? Pick your state.
Study for the Texas tests
Practice questions written from the Texas manual, an AI coach on every answer, and Mr. Egg's video lessons for the pre-trip.
Practise for Texas in the appRelated guides
Questions people ask
Get a DOT medical card, pass Texas's knowledge tests for a commercial learner's permit, hold it at least 14 days, complete entry-level driver training from a registered provider, then pass the vehicle inspection, basic control and road tests.
Texas gives the modernized skills test, since September 1, 2024.
21 to drive across state lines under federal rules. Most states let drivers 18 to 20 hold a CDL for in-state driving only; the Texas manual says whether Texas does.