[John Palasek]

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The thing that drives me crazy here in NY is the trailer weight. Here. (and I suppose elsewhere), if I tow a trailer over 10,000 lbs. GVW, I need a Class A CDL.

Right now, (and for the last 15 years), I have a Class B CDL with Air Brakes, Tank and HazMat endorsements. So I can drive any straight truck up to 80,000 lbs. GVW. Yet, if I pull a trailer with my pickup truck, (which is how I do things), and that trailer tops out at 10,001 lbs., I can be cited for driving out of class.

Is that ridiculous, or what?

Meanwhile, the trailer itself is barely adequate to haul my 873 Bobcat along with my Clamshell bucket, which I use almost exclusively except for grading. In fact, truth be told, I believe that when I'm loaded, I'm actually overweight by about 100 lbs. or so.

I think that they should change the trailer weight restriction to 12,000 lbs. instead of the 10,000 lbs. it is now just for safety's sake so that I could then go out and buy a real, honest-to-goodness 12,000 lb trailer which could better handle my 873/bucket setup.

But no, if I want to have that breathing room, I have to go out and get a Class A CDL and so does anyone else who might drive my truck. I do all the driving as it is because I'm a small setup and I'm still on all my jobs. But I'm not getting any younger and I would like to look towards delegating tasks to others in the future.

The trouble with THAT is that it's hard enough to find employees who can do what I need them to do right now and I can only imagine how difficult it will be to find them with a Class A CDL as well. If they'd raise the trailer weight to 12,000 lbs, then a either regular license or a "paper" CDL is all that's needed to do things right.

But that'll never happen because there's too much money to be made in fines for overweight or class violations.


-JP





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