Study for and obtain the HazMat endorsement. Why jeopardize your driving career or the safety of the motoring public?
Exactly. Or at least
study for it. There are some shippers who require a HAZMAT endorsement for all shipments, HAZMAT or not. Many shippers (and some authorities) respect a HAZMAT endorsement on a CDL, as it shows, to at lease some degree, that you actually
do know your аss from a hole in the ground and that you take your job seriously, especially those in a cargo van (I've been told that by two shippers and one border guard).
Some carriers don't require a CDL at all. Some require a CDL, but don't require a HAZMAT endorsement. Van and Sprinter drivers who opt for a Class C CDL will have to have an endorsement of some kind, either HAZMAT or Passenger, since there is no such thing as an endorsement-free Class C CDL. You have to take the CDL written test to get it, but a Class C CDL is essentially a Class D operator license with an endorsement. Some van drivers merely opt for a Class B license free of endorsements.
Regardless of whether you don't have a HAZMAT endorsement, it would behoove you to become familiar with HAZMAT, which is why I push that people at the very least study the HAZMAT section in the CDL manual and take the practice tests. This is your
job, and you need to know how to do it, even if you never haul HAZMAT.
Panther, for example, like many other carriers, won't put placardable HAZMAT on a van. They won't do this because van drivers are mostly morons who
don't know their job, the rules and regulations, and when they're placarded they have to act and think like an actual professional driver (or so the theory goes). The turnover rate for van drivers is obscene, so there's little reason to waste time in teaching van drivers the rules regarding HAZMAT, logging and scaling, for just a handful of loads a year. It's easier just to put all placardable HAZMAT on a truck that already logs and scales every day.
CSR's, load planners, Safety and dispatchers all try to ensure that placardable HAZMAT not be booked on cargo vans in these cases. However, have you ever received a Load Offer that turned out to be be very different with regards to number of pieces and weight? I've had it happen several times where, say, the load offer was 1-piece, 500 pounds, and I get to the shipper and it's 1 skid of 4 drums of 2000 pounds of placardable HAZMAT. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of van drivers would just load and go and never give it a second thought, that, or think about it, but wouldn't want to give up the loaded miles and they'd run it anyway figuring nothing would happen. <snort>
I've also been recently dispatched to pick up what turned out to be 600 pounds of PG I aluminum powder, which is a nasty 4.3 Dangerous When Wet,
always-placardable HAZMAT material, that can explode if it gets a little bit wet (used to make flash powder, fireworks, pyrotechnics, cherry bombs, stun grenades etc.), and I had the shipper insisting that if it was less than 1001 pounds it was fine to ship in an unplacarded cargo van. Table 1 from the HAZMAT book says otherwise. If you don't
know your job, you may be ignorant or stupid enough to just load 'er up and drive off.
Even if you don't have a HAZMAT endorsement and/or you never haul HAZMAT, you'd better know the difference between HAZMAT and not-HAZMAT. That's
your job.
