DOT Road Test Requirement (§ 391.31): When Does a CDL Count Instead? 2026

Published October 2, 2026 | TruckerNavi Inc | 12 min read

By the TruckerNavi compliance team, led by Dmitry Borovoy, a New Jersey-licensed insurance producer (NPN 22313558) and author of Safety Manager: From Zero to Expert.

The short answer: yes, every driver needs a road test on file, and no, you usually do not have to run one yourself. Under 49 CFR 391.31(a) a person shall not drive a commercial motor vehicle until he has successfully completed a road test and been issued a certificate of driver's road test. Under 49 CFR 391.33(a) a motor carrier may accept, in place of that test, either a valid Commercial Driver's License issued by a State that licensed the driver after a road test in the type of vehicle you intend to assign, or a copy of a valid 391.31 certificate issued within the preceding 3 years. Whichever route you take, something has to land in the driver qualification file: 391.33(b) requires a legible copy of the license or certificate you accepted.

Two exclusions are written into the rule itself and they are the part small carriers miss. Section 391.33(a)(1) accepts a CDL but not including double/triple trailer or tank vehicle endorsements. If the unit you are assigning needs one of those, the license does not substitute for anything and you run the actual test. Everything below is sourced to the rule text at 49 CFR 391.31, 49 CFR 391.33, 49 CFR 391.51 and FMCSA's own published guidance. This is a walk through the regulation, not legal or employment advice on a specific hire.

What does § 391.31 actually require the test to contain?

The section is short and unusually specific. 391.31(c) first sets a qualitative standard: the test must be of sufficient duration to let the examiner evaluate the driver's skill at handling the commercial motor vehicle and associated equipment that the carrier intends to assign. Then it sets a floor. As a minimum, the driver must be tested, while operating the type of vehicle you intend to assign, on his skill at each of the following:

1. The pretrip inspection required by § 392.7;
2. Coupling and uncoupling of combination units, if the equipment he may drive includes combination units;
3. Placing the vehicle in operation;
4. Use of the vehicle's controls and emergency equipment;
5. Operating the vehicle in traffic and while passing other motor vehicles;
6. Turning the vehicle;
7. Braking, and slowing the vehicle by means other than braking (engine brake, retarder, gearing down);
8. Backing and parking.

Three phrases in that list do real work. Type of vehicle the carrier intends to assign means a test in a day cab does not qualify a driver for a set of doubles. Associated equipment pulls in the trailer, the securement gear, the liftgate. And slowing by means other than braking is a separate line item from braking, which is why a serious road test form has separate boxes for the two.

It is worth knowing how big the first item is. Section 392.7(a) names eleven parts and accessories the driver must be satisfied are in good working order before the vehicle moves: service brakes including trailer brake connections, parking (hand) brake, steering mechanism, lighting devices and reflectors, tires, horn, windshield wipers, rear-vision mirrors, coupling devices, wheels and rims, and emergency equipment. The road test has to show that the driver can check them, not that he can recite them.

Who is allowed to give the road test?

391.31(b) answers this in three clauses:

• The test shall be given by the motor carrier or a person designated by it. There is no license, certification or approved-examiner registry involved. You can designate your safety manager, a senior driver, a trainer or an outside company.
• The person giving the test must be competent to evaluate and determine whether the driver has demonstrated that he can operate the vehicle and associated equipment you intend to assign. FMCSA guidance on this section confirms a carrier may designate another person or organization to administer the road test, on exactly that condition: the person administering it is competent to evaluate and determine the results.
• A driver who is a motor carrier must be given the test by a person other than himself or herself. An owner-operator cannot sign his own road test.

When is the test given, before hiring or after?

Before, and the Clearinghouse duty standing next to it is what confuses new carriers. FMCSA settled it in Clearinghouse FAQ FMCSA-D&A-CLEAR-382.701-FAQ010, issued January 27, 2022: an employer is not required to run a pre-employment Clearinghouse query before administering a road test, because 49 CFR 382.701(a) requires the query when hiring a driver to perform safety-sensitive functions, and the road test occurs before the driver is hired. You may query at the time of the road test, but you must query before you put him to work. The Clearinghouse help line is 1-844-955-0207, and the registration itself is walked through in our FMCSA Clearinghouse registration guide.

What about a driver straight out of a training school?

FMCSA guidance under § 391.31, Question 2, effective May 4, 1997, answers that one: the road test is administered only after the student has demonstrated a sufficient degree of proficiency on a range or off-road course, and a student who passes the road test and is qualified to operate in interstate commerce could cross a State line in the process of receiving training. Notice what is not among the equivalents: schooling, entry-level driver training (ELDT) included, appears nowhere in § 391.33. There are exactly two equivalents in that section, and a school certificate is not one of them.

What paperwork does a road test produce?

This is where most files fall apart, because there are two documents and carriers usually produce one. They are not interchangeable.

Two details worth pinning down. The certificate asks for approximate miles driven, the only number in the whole section, and an investigator reading "2 miles" against an eight-operation test that includes traffic and passing will draw the obvious conclusion. And FMCSA guidance on 391.31 answers the shortcut question directly: a carrier may not use a blanket certification of road test for specific vehicles with driver names left out. The published answer is one word, "No."

What can I accept instead of a road test?

Section 391.33 is titled Equivalent of road test and it offers exactly two documents. A person who seeks to drive may present, and a motor carrier may accept:

1. 391.33(a)(1): a valid Commercial Driver's License as defined in § 383.5, but not including double/triple trailer or tank vehicle endorsements, which was issued to operate specific categories of commercial motor vehicles and which, under the laws of that State, licenses him after successful completion of a road test in a commercial motor vehicle of the type the motor carrier intends to assign to him.
2. 391.33(a)(2): a copy of a valid certificate of driver's road test issued to him under § 391.31 within the preceding 3 years.

Then two clauses that decide what the file looks like. 391.33(b): if a driver presents and a carrier accepts a license or certificate as equivalent, the motor carrier shall retain a legible copy of the license or certificate in its files as part of the driver's qualification file. And 391.33(c): a carrier may require any person who presents an equivalent to take a road test anyway, as a condition of employment. The floor is federal; the ceiling is yours.

Notice the word may in 391.33(a): accepting an equivalent is a carrier decision, not a driver right. FMCSA restates this in its 2020 guidance on 391.33, noting that it remains the prerogative of the motor carrier to require and enforce more stringent requirements than the minimum Federal regulations.

Why are tank vehicles and doubles carved out of the equivalent?

Because for those two endorsements the State never gave a driving test at all, so there is nothing to be equivalent to. 49 CFR 383.93(c) lists what each endorsement requires:

FMCSA's guidance on 391.31, effective May 4, 1997 and still published, states the operating rule in one sentence: the employer may accept a CDL in lieu of a road test if the driver is required to successfully complete a road test to obtain a CDL in the State of issuance, however, if the employer intends to assign to the driver a vehicle necessitating the doubles/triples or tank vehicle endorsement, the employer must administer the road test under § 391.31 in a representative vehicle.

The words representative vehicle are borrowed from the CDL rules. Under 49 CFR 383.91(b) a representative vehicle for a given group is any commercial motor vehicle meeting the definition of that group. So a tanker road test is run in a tanker, not in the dry van that happens to be in the yard.

Situation table: is a test needed, what can replace it, what goes in the file

This is the working document. Find the row, read across, put the named paper in the folder.

The last row of that table deserves more precision than it usually gets. Today § 383.77 is titled Substitute for knowledge and driving skills tests for drivers with military CMV experience. Its paragraph (a) lets a State waive the knowledge test for a service member who certifies one year of service in a listed driving specialty; its paragraph (b) lets a State waive the driving skills test for an applicant who was employed in such a position within the last year and operated a vehicle representative of the CMV type for at least the 2 years immediately preceding separation, with no disqualifying convictions under § 383.51(b). The logic FMCSA applies is the same either way: if the State used a substitute means of determining ability that the rule itself provides for, the ability was checked, just in another form, and the CDL remains a full equivalent under 391.33(a)(1).

The mistake: a copy of the CDL in the file and nothing else

Here is the pattern we open almost every week. A three-truck carrier hires a driver, photocopies the CDL, drops it in a folder labelled with his name, and considers the road test question closed. Sometimes that is correct. Often it is not, and the difference is invisible until somebody asks.

Four failure modes, in the order we find them:

• Tanker and doubles work. The carve-out is in the rule text and there is no argument to make. If the assignment needs N or T, the road test package has to exist.
• Non-CDL drivers. Sprinter vans, hotshot rigs and box trucks between 10,001 and 26,000 pounds are still commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce: the definition in 49 CFR 390.5T starts at a gross weight rating of 10,001 pounds. Their drivers still need the 391.31 entry. There is no CDL to accept, so the file needs a real road test or another carrier's certificate issued within 3 years.
• The wrong class on the copy. A Class B copy in the folder of a man dispatched with a 53-foot trailer is worse than a missing road test, because it also puts § 383.37(a) in play: no employer may allow, require, permit or authorize a driver to operate a CMV if the employer knows or should reasonably know that the driver does not hold a CLP or CDL of the proper class or endorsements. In Appendix B to Part 385 that one is flagged acute, the heavier of the two categories.
• Illegibility. A copy too dark to read the class, expiration or endorsements is not a legible copy. Free to fix, and nobody does it until an investigator squints at it.

The clean fix takes fifteen minutes per driver: pull the file, write down what unit that driver is actually assigned, and check the copy against the assignment. The same discipline applies to the rest of the folder, laid out document by document in our DQ file audit checklist.

When you cannot accept an equivalent at all

Five situations where 391.33 is closed to you:

1. The assignment needs a tank vehicle endorsement. Excluded by 391.33(a)(1).
2. The assignment needs a double or triple trailer endorsement. Same clause.
3. The driver is being physically qualified under § 391.44 for the first time. That is the alternative vision standard for a driver who does not meet, in the worse eye, the distant visual acuity standard with corrective lenses or the field of vision standard, or both. 391.44(d)(1) says he shall not drive until he has completed a road test after physical qualification and been issued a 391.31 certificate, and he must tell the carrier he is required to take one. 391.44(d)(2) then states plainly that the provisions of § 391.33 do not apply. Three narrow exceptions follow in 391.44(d)(3) through (5).
4. The driver has no CDL. Path (a)(1) is built on a Commercial Driver's License as defined in § 383.5. An ordinary state license is not that document.
5. The prior certificate is older than 3 years. On day 1,096 it is a historical record, not an equivalent.

Does an owner-operator need a road test on himself?

He needs the file entry, and he cannot manufacture it alone. 391.31(b) is explicit: a driver who is a motor carrier must be given the test by a person other than himself or herself.

In practice most one-truck owner-operators never take a road test, legitimately: they hold a Class A CDL, the motor carrier (the same human being) accepts it under 391.33(a)(1), and a legible copy goes in the file under 391.33(b). It breaks the moment the assignment changes. An owner-operator who buys a tanker or starts pulling doubles must find someone competent to test him, because 391.33 no longer covers the assignment and 391.31(b) forbids self-testing. The rule allows designating another person or organization, so a training company, a larger carrier's safety department or an independent examiner all work, as long as that person is competent to evaluate the result and signs both documents.

Who is exempt from the road test entirely?

Section 391.31(a) opens with the phrase except as provided in subpart G. Subpart G of Part 391 is titled Limited Exemptions and it is short. The exemptions that actually touch the road test are:

• § 391.61. Sections 391.21, 391.23 and 391.31 do not apply to a driver who has been a single-employer driver of a motor carrier for a continuous period that began before January 1, 1971, for as long as he remains a single-employer driver of that carrier. Read the date and move on.
• § 391.67. Subpart D, which is the road test subpart, does not apply to a farm vehicle driver aged 18 or older who drives an articulated commercial motor vehicle. The same section also drops § 391.11(b)(1) and (7), Subpart C and Subpart F for that driver.
• § 391.69. Sections 391.21, 391.23 and 391.31 do not apply to a driver who was a single-employer driver of a private motor carrier of passengers (business) as of July 1, 1994, so long as he continues as a single-employer driver of that carrier.

Two neighbours in the same subpart are misread as road test exemptions and are not. § 391.63, multiple-employer drivers, excuses four things and nothing else: the employment application under § 391.21, the investigations and inquiries under § 391.23, the annual driving record inquiry under § 391.25(a) and the annual review under § 391.25(b). The road test stays. And 391.63(b) adds a duty of its own: before you let such a driver take a vehicle you must obtain his name, his social security number and the number, type and issuing licensing authority of his commercial licence, and keep that information for three years after his employment ends. § 391.65, drivers furnished by another motor carrier, lets you skip the generally applicable driver qualification file requirements only if that carrier gives you a signed certificate that the driver is fully qualified under Part 391, and then 391.65(b) makes you contact them to verify it and keep a copy three years. The certificate expires no later than two years out, or sooner if the medical certificate does.

How long does the road test stay in the file?

Section 391.51 sets the shelf life, and the road test has an unusual one.

• 391.51(c): the driver qualification file is kept for as long as the driver is employed and for three years thereafter.
• 391.51(d) lists the five record types that may be removed three years after the date of execution: the annual motor vehicle record, the annual review note, the medical examiner's certificate or CDLIS MVR, any FMCSA medical variance or Skill Performance Evaluation certificate, and the National Registry verification note.
• The road test slot, 391.51(b)(3), is not on that list. It stays for the whole life of the file. A road test run in 2019 for a driver still with you in 2026 is still the live document.

That asymmetry is the opposite of how the medical card behaves, and the medical certificate is the item most likely to be stale in a real file: see medical certificate and self-certification and, for what happens when it lapses, CDL downgrade over an expired medical card.

Section 391.51(b)(3) is also the only place all three acceptable answers sit side by side. The file must hold the certificate of driver's road test issued under 391.31(e); or a copy of the license or certificate accepted as equivalent under 391.33; or the original of the written statement under 391.44(d)(3)(ii)(A) that the driver is not required to take the test, together with the original or a copy of the driver's own certification under 391.44(d)(3)(i). If your folder holds none of those three, the slot is empty however thick the folder is. A dispatcher's memo, an offer letter mentioning experience or a screenshot of a licence lookup are not on the list.

What does an investigator do with this at a compliance review?

Here the accurate version is better news than the scary one, and more useful, but only if you keep two procedures apart. Both run off the same list of acute and critical regulations, printed in section VII of Appendix B to Part 385. The arithmetic laid on top of that list is not the same.

• New entrant safety audit, Appendix A to Part 385, whose title is Explanation of Safety Audit Evaluation Criteria: each instance of noncompliance with an acute regulation is worth 1.5 points, each instance with a critical one 1 point, and 3 or more points inside a single factor means the carrier is determined not to have basic safety management controls for that factor.
• Compliance review, Appendix B to Part 385, whose title is Explanation of Safety Rating Process: 1 point for each instance of noncompliance with an acute regulation or for each pattern of noncompliance with a critical one. A pattern is more than one violation, and when a number of documents are reviewed the number of violations needed to make a pattern is at least 10 percent of those examined. A factor is rated Satisfactory at 0 points, Conditional at 1 point, Unsatisfactory at 2 points or more.

The difference is not academic. A single missing critical document scores nothing at all in a compliance review, because one violation is not a pattern, while the same single miss carries a full point in a new entrant audit. Driver qualification sits in Factor 2, Driver, alongside Parts 382 and 383. What an investigator opens and in what order is walked through in what happens during a DOT audit.

So be precise about the risk. A missing road test entry violates 391.11(b)(7) and 391.51(b)(3) and gets written up, but it is not one of the enumerated acute or critical regulations driving the safety-audit score, and it is not a roadside inspection code landing on a driver's record. What it does is answer a different question: whether the file is a working system or a folder of photocopies. When the slot is empty across every driver, the finding that follows tends to be 391.51(a), failing to maintain a driver qualification file, which is critical. And if it comes out at the same time that the man was dispatched on the wrong class of licence, the acute regulation 383.37(a) switches on beside it.

The same investigator reads the neighbouring slots at the same time, and those two do have teeth: the previous-employer safety performance history under § 391.23, covered in the previous employer inquiry, and the annual record work under § 391.25, in the annual MVR and driving record review.

A short procedure that keeps this slot clean

1. Write down the assigned vehicle type before you touch the file. Every decision in 391.31 and 391.33 turns on that one fact.
2. Tanker or doubles? Run the test, in a representative vehicle. No equivalent exists.
3. No CDL? Run the test, unless he brings a 391.31 certificate under three years old.
4. CDL and an ordinary assignment? Accept it, and file a legible copy under 391.33(b). Check the class against the assignment, not against the job title.
5. Use a real form: a rating line for each of the eight operations in 391.31(c), examiner's signature, no blanket templates. Issue the certificate with power unit, trailers, date and approximate miles filled in, and give the driver his copy: that is the requirement in 391.31(g), not a courtesy.
6. Re-test on a material change of equipment. A move from van to tanker is a new question, not a renewal.

Related articles

• Previous Employer Safety Performance History: What § 391.23 Really Requires
• The Annual MVR and Driving Record Review Under § 391.25
• Medical Certificate and Self-Certification: Who Files What
• CDL Downgrade Over an Expired Medical Card
• DQ File Audit Checklist: Every Document, in Order
• Unassigned Driving Time on an ELD: Who Must Close It