From: Ryan M Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 09:57:59 PST
At 11:03 AM -0800 3/18/02, Joe Shannon wrote:
> I will probably get black balled for this but here is my thinking.
Not by me. Discussion of such topics is good. All experience is valid.
> It seems to me that the average vehicle weight of this list is
>growing. That is more trucks, less jeeps. We all have our own reasons
>and I'm not going to open that can of worms. Anyway my point is (not
>blowing my own horn but stating facts) I had a CDL and the forerunner to
>that, a chauffeur's license before I started collecting green scrap
>iron, I was also a ASE certified heavy equipment mechanic, and was used
>to handling a vehicle that weighed a lot more than the 34,000 pounds
>that my M-62 weighs. I see a lot of posts from people with good
>intentions that haven't got a clue about the care of a truck.
The thing with the CDL regs is to deal with people that are driving
big heavy trucks daily. I don't think anyone here will be driving an
M55 with 25,000 lbs of cargo daily. Much of the red tape us far
beyond being superfluous. Opening up that additional regulatory can
of worms is likely to cause more problems than one needs to deal
with. Its probably a good idea to get weighed and such to be sure you
aren't overloaded (ie comply with the regs) but don't do the
additional paperwork. You aren't operating the vehicle as a
commercial vehicle. The Army doesn't send it's military people to get
CDLs to make the states happy. There are exceptions for a reason.
Now, all of this is me operating on the assumption that the evidence
I have found to this point allows someone to operate a vehicle that
does fall under the CDL classification but is exempted because it is
personal. I'm currently waiting on hold to ask some folks at the
Georgia Motorvehicles Driver's Services unit.
> Please consider that if one of us has a wreck or runs over someone
>in a yugo (this goes for myself too) there is a good chance we will all
>have to give up our pass time and worse than that, they will soon be
>forgotten. This will give demil laws a new head of steam.
Granted. But that could apply to me driving my ferret around as if it
were my ultra light Honda Insight (the 50-55 mpg daily driver that
compensates for the Ferret's 5-8mpg). There wasn't anyplace I could
go for instruction, so the only way I could learn was read the
manual's several times over. Speak to people that had driven them and
think about the process. I learned (almost the hard way) that
ferret's do not like to stop on down hill runs at 40mph. I had a
light switch to red and ended up blowing through the (then empty)
intersection. Any other of my cars (76 Monte Carlo included) would
have stopped fine. That one incident was all it took to re-enforce
the "ferrets don't like to stop" rule. Now, if I break 25mph in a
35mph zone its unusual. The cops that have asked my why the ferret
has an orange beacon get the answer " Its 4 tons and has 4 drum
brakes, it doesn't accelerate very fast and doesn't slow down very
fast, so I don't go that fast". I think they like that.
If I get a reasonable answer from the Ga License folks (crosses
fingers) then I'll post a follow up.
-- -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- - Ryan Montieth Gill '01 Honda Insight - - rmgill@mindspring.com '76 Chevy Monte Carlo - - ryan.gill@turner.com '72 Honda CB750 - - www.mindspring.com/~rmgill '60 Daimler FV701H Mk2/3 - - I speak not for CNN, nor they for me - ---------------------------------------------------------------- - Smart ID cards in the US, Smart ID cards in Hong Kong, - - what is the difference? - ---------------------------------------------------------------- - C&R-FFL / Protect your electronic rights! \ EFF - - SAF & NRA/ Join the EFF! http://www.eff.org/ \ DoD #0780 - ----------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Apr 08 2002 - 00:27:56 PDT