I'm trying to be 100% legal, believe me. To tell you the truth, I really don't know if I'm currently legal driving an 8,750 GVWR Sprinter with my training gear in back. According to my insurance company I am, and I've explained to them time and again what I was going to do.
Soundguy,
I would recommend to do this, it will cost you 20 or so bucks to do it right. Take your empty sprinter to the nearest truck stop, fill it up and get the thing weights at the scales - $7 or $8 bucks. Go in and get the yellow ticket and tell them you will be re-weighing the van and go home and load the thing up. Take it back, fuel it up and get it re-weighed. This will tell you two important things, the first is how much your sprinter weighs without anything in it, and the second is how much your stuff weighs. You can surmise from this if you are legal.
The insurance company can say what they want, but if there is a real problem, accident for example believe me it will become an issue.
And according to the local office of the MVA I'm legal as long as I don't overload my Sprinter or charge customers to transport packages. Again, I explained I was a seminar instructor hauling my own gear across the country. And to continue the IT example, I used to do just that... hooking up ATM machines all over the country. I was always hauling a laptop and digital scope around with me in every sort of personal and company vehicle imaginable. All I was ever asked for was my passport and security clearance with never a CDL or DOT number in site.
Caveat about your local MVA or SOS or DMV, they are not rocket scientist and I can go to seven of them and get a different answer for the same question. Do not ever depend on them for an answer.
I used to travel as a consultant, most of the stuff I did on the west coast I got there via commercial and private plane while all the stuff I did on the east coast I drove. I never had an issue or a concern even if I was hauling customers stuff (paper work and software) back to the office. It is not an issue when you doing service stuff like this because the vehicle is nothing more than a pickup at most.
So at what point does a vehicle used to carry your own gear to work become "commercial"? Just about every guy on the interstate going to work and talking on his cellphone is using his car as a mobile office, and certainly making money from it. I know that thousands of salesguys haul gear to seminars and customers in the back of their mini-vans and pickup trucks. Do they all need CDL's as well? That just can't be possible.
The rules vary between each state but it is confusing because there is no harmonizing of the laws that exist outside of the Fed’s laws and that is mandated by the constitution. There is a general rule I am told that is used, if it looks like a commercial vehicle, it is assumed that it is. Minivans, Pickups, cars seem to look non-commercial.
Is the flash point 100# of gear or 1,000# of gear or 10,000# of gear??? Perhaps is it a vehicle over 10,000# GVWR? That seems to be a legal point in some states, while others like MD make it 26,000# for a truck or 10,000# for a trailer and max 26,000# combined rating.
NO NO NO, now I am confused!
You got to understand the how things are classified throughout the country.
Light Duty
1 <6,000 lbs
2 6,000-10,000 lbs
Medium Duty
3 10,000-14,000 lbs
4 14,000-16,000 lbs
5 16,000-19,500 lbs
Light-Heavy Duty
6 19,500-26,000 lbs
Heavy Duty
7 26,000-33,000 lbs
8 >33,000 lbs
All states agree that 10K is the difference between a light duty vehicle and a medium duty vehicle and this is where it matters. It used to be that no one drove a class 2 vehicle as an everyday vehicle and when most of the laws were created of harmonized, there were no SUVs or 1 ton pickups being driven by soccer moms – make sense?
Like I am trying to say, your state can say one thing but it does not help you when say Wyoming has pulled you over and want to see your paper work and commercial drivers license. I know Michigan can and have taken the keys and towed the truck because the driver could not get someone to drive it away for them.
Again, I'm not trying to be a smartass or anything. I just can't get a legal definiiton of what point a vehicle becomes commercial and requires a CDL and DOT number? I don't want to try to play the RV or hobbiest exception game that racers do. I'm way too visible for that. If any of you would dig far enough into my website and Google my name you'll see that I come up on a few hundred thousand websites. Everyone in the industry knows exactly what I do and my road schedule is plastered all over the place, in many cases literally plastered up on walls all over a town.
Well I can tell you from a project I was working on answers in this industry are not easy to come by. As I said before, many are not rocket scientist and many more don’t read the laws or statutes and assume that what they think is correct, is correct. I think the internet is a good thing but there is a lot of misinformation.
So what's a mother to do??? Who the heck do I talk to that can give me a definitive answer on how to proceed? I came to you guys in hope of some answers, and I'm getting a lot of info, but not enough yet for an informed decision. However, I certainly appreciate all your thoughts.
Here is what I suggest, write down a number of questions and I would go to the nearest scale house and talk to the officers there, asking them those questions. But I also would suggest you take you most traveled states and call them to ask them those questions. You can go from there with that information.
