Maryland CDL Practice Test 2026

Not quiteCorrect answer: A — Seeing the trailer sitting out of its normal position in your mirrors

A trailer skid starts behind you and gives no useful feel through the seat or the wheel until it is well developed. The mirrors show it while there is still time to release the brakes, which is why you check them after any hard application.

Expecting to feel a trailer skid the way you feel a car losing the rear end. By the time it reaches the driver's hands, the trailer is usually already out of the lane.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — When you finish driving for the day, on every unit you took out.

The after-trip inspection is tied to the end of your driving, not to whether anything went wrong, and it covers every unit you drove, including trailers you dropped along the way.

Believing the after-trip inspection is triggered by a suspected problem, when the whole point is to find problems the driver has not yet suspected.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — Either the front or the rear brakes are not working fully, so stopping takes longer

Each circuit serves a different set of axles. Losing one leaves you braking with the other, which still stops the vehicle but over a longer distance — so the response is to bring it to a safe stop and have it repaired, not to carry on.

Reading redundancy as full replacement. A backup circuit keeps you from having nothing, not from having less.

Not quiteCorrect answer: A — Requirements differ from one jurisdiction to the next, so the driver has to learn what applies on the roads actually being driven

Several layers of government legislate on load weight, securement and covering, and their requirements are not identical. Crossing a line can change what a compliant load looks like, and the duty to know that travels with the driver rather than with the freight.

The belief that a single federal standard covers everything, so one compliant load needs no further thought once it crosses a state line.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Come up to the normal range within seconds of starting.

Oil pressure is not a warm-up reading. The pump is turning the moment the engine turns, so a delay means the bearings are running without a film of oil right now, and that damage cannot be undone.

Grouping oil pressure with the temperature gauges that legitimately climb slowly, so a dangerously slow pressure rise is excused as normal warm-up behaviour.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Add up what the tractor and everything it tows are rated at, or actually weigh, and use whichever pairing gives the biggest total

The rating is meant to describe what the whole combination is built to handle, so when the manufacturer prints no single number the fallback is arithmetic: total the tractor and trailer figures, and the largest total you can form is the one that counts.

Assuming that a combination with no printed GCWR simply has no combination rating, so only the tractor's GVWR matters.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — Water and oil collect in them and can damage the system or freeze

Compressing air squeezes moisture and compressor oil out of it, and both end up in the tanks. Left there, the water can freeze in cold weather and block valves, so tanks are drained daily unless the vehicle has automatic drain valves.

Treating compressed air as clean and dry, when compressing it is precisely what pulls water out of it.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — That the vehicle is inside its gross and axle weight limits, even with the contents unseen

A seal stops you from looking inside, but it does not stop you from weighing what you are pulling. Scales tell you what the eyes cannot, so weight compliance stays fully checkable and fully your obligation.

The belief that a seal you may not break also seals off your responsibility, so a sealed trailer can be hauled without any verification at all.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Ease off the brakes, if it is safe to do so, until you regain control

Trailer ABS protects the trailer wheels only; the unprotected tractor wheels are the ones locking and swinging the cab. Releasing enough pressure lets those wheels roll again, and a rolling wheel is the only wheel that can steer or resist the jackknife.

Assuming ABS anywhere on the combination protects the whole combination, so the driver stays on the pedal while the unprotected axles are already sliding.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — Locked trailer wheels started the skid, and the hand valve does nothing but hold those same wheels locked

The hand valve is a trailer-brake control and nothing else. Adding trailer braking to a trailer that is sliding on locked wheels reinforces the exact condition that caused the swing, which is why the correction is to release rather than apply.

Picturing the hand valve as a way to pull the trailer straight, like tightening a rope. It cannot steer the trailer; it can only stop its wheels from turning.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — Four parts; brake lag distance is added to perception, reaction, and braking distance

A car driver deals with perception, reaction, and braking distance. An air-braked vehicle carries a fourth segment, brake lag distance, covered after the pedal is down but before the brakes take hold, which is why the total at 55 mph runs past 450 feet.

Assuming a big truck simply needs a longer version of the same three-part stop, which hides the extra segment that no amount of driver alertness can shorten.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Clearance lamps and reflectors at the rear have to show red; amber back there tells a following driver he is looking at the front of a vehicle.

Lamp colour is information, not decoration: amber toward the front, red at the rear. An amber clearance lamp at the back of a trailer at night tells an approaching driver the vehicle is facing him, which is exactly the wrong conclusion.

Believing that a lamp which lights is a lamp which passes, so colour errors are dismissed as cosmetic when they actively misinform other drivers.

Not quiteCorrect answer: A — Keeps the wheels from locking up during hard braking so you keep control

ABS is an addition to the normal brakes and only intervenes when a wheel is about to lock. It does not necessarily stop you in less distance — what it buys you is steering control while braking hard.

Believing ABS means shorter stops, which encourages following closer than the vehicle can actually stop from.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — The left side of the vehicle strikes a vehicle beside or ahead of it because the rear wheels track inside the front wheels

Off-tracking means the rear of a long vehicle follows a tighter arc than the front, so an early turn sweeps the left side of the unit through space the driver believed was already cleared.

The belief that if the front of the vehicle clears an obstacle the rest of the vehicle will follow the same path, when the rear consistently cuts the corner.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Let speed reach 45, brake firmly until you are down to about 40, release completely, and repeat once you are back at 45

Firm, short applications of roughly three seconds put heat in and then give the drums time to shed it while the brakes are fully released, and each application should take about five mph off your safe speed. Constant light pressure never lets them cool, which is precisely how linings and drums are heated into fade.

The intuition that gentle continuous pressure is easier on the brakes than firm intermittent pressure, when the opposite is true because cooling only happens during release.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Gravity is pulling the weight of the vehicle and its cargo downhill

On a grade, gravity is continuously feeding energy into the vehicle, and the more total weight there is the more it feeds. Nothing about closing the throttle opposes that, which is why controlling a descent is an active job rather than a matter of simply not accelerating.

Attributing runaway speed to something mechanical, a freewheeling gearbox or falling air pressure. Blaming a component invites a driver to look for a fault instead of recognizing a normal force that has to be managed on every grade, with every load.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — When one-fourth or more of the leaves are missing.

One-fourth is the line at which an inspector will stop the vehicle. It is not the line at which the spring became dangerous, and a lower count is no licence to keep driving.

Reading the out-of-service threshold as the point where the defect becomes dangerous. It is only the point where someone else will stop you; a single broken leaf can still shift and strike a tire.

Not quiteCorrect answer: C — You may have lost ABS on one or more wheels, but the normal brakes still work

ABS sits on top of the normal braking system. Losing it costs you the anti-lock function at one or more wheels, but the brakes themselves are unaffected — you have ordinary brakes and should have the fault repaired.

Treating an ABS light as a total brake failure, or at the other extreme as a light that can be ignored indefinitely.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — Release the brakes so the trailer wheels can roll again and get their grip back

A trailer swings because its wheels have stopped turning and are sliding. Only rolling tires can hold the trailer in line, so letting the brakes off is what ends the skid, while any added braking keeps the wheels locked and the slide going.

The instinct that a vehicle going somewhere wrong needs more brake. In a skid the brakes are the cause, and releasing them is the correction.

Not quiteCorrect answer: B — An electric switch operated by air pressure when you brake

Applying the brakes raises air pressure in the line, and that pressure closes an electrical switch that lights the brake lamps. It is worth knowing because a fault there leaves you slowing with no warning to the traffic behind.

Assuming the brake lights are wired to the pedal itself, as in a car, rather than to the air pressure the pedal creates.