One that in CA, when you put a flatbed onto a pickup, you have changed it from a pickup to a truck by removing the open box type bed that defines a pickup in CA. Now in CA, pickups are exempt from a little jewel called the weight fee. Basically if I want to register a pickup, I have it weighed empty on a scale, take the weight to the DMV, and every year I pay a certain amount on my registration for the weight of that vehicle. For example for my pickup I might pay for 5500lbs, its unladen weight. Trucks are different in that you pay for your maximum gross weight, generally 80,000lbs. If I register a hay truck that weighs say 25,000lbs but can legally gross 80,000; I pay a weight fee for 80,000. Where this gets interesting is if you put a flatbed on a pickup you should now legally be obligated to pay the weight fee for your maximum gross weight. Put a trailer on behind it, and all of a sudden my 5,500lb pickup could be legally required to be licensed up to 20,000lbs or so. That can get mighty expensive. Not to mention that if you are licensed for that much, youd better have a CDL, med card, CA#, DOT#, etc. Here is a little excerpt from Farm Bureau article on this, sorry I dont have a link. Pickup trucks generally pay weight fees that are assessed against vehicles based on their unladen weight. These fees range from $8 per year for vehicles with an unladen weight of less than 3,000 pounds to $257 per year for vehicles with an unladen weight of 8,000 pounds. Larger trucks pay weight fees based on their GVW. This fee schedule starts at $250 per year for vehicles with a GVW of 10,001 to 15,000 pounds. In order to qualify for the less costly unladen weight fee schedule, a pickup truck must meet a specific statutory definition. One element of that definition is that the truck features a box-type bed. The author points out that some individuals may wish to convert their truck beds, for purposes of convenience, to a flat bed-type, in order to facilitate loading or tying down of loads. Under existing law, such a change would result in the owner losing the pickup truck weight fee exemption. The other thing that flatbed owners are seeing is a real crackdown on stuff being tied down. I can, to a point, understand the need for this. Nobody wants to see anyone hurt or killed as a result of stuff falling off of a flatbed. But in reality, not every little thing that is on the back of a pickup needs to be tied down exactly according to the rule book. We are going through this whole situation with hay trucks right now. Hay has been dragged all over CA since the invention of the hay baler and since it isnt a simple thing to get secured on a truck, the hay hauler came up with ways to get it secured that have worked, until now. All of a sudden what has worked for years and years isnt good enough anymore. Near as I can decipher the rules today, what the goobermint has come up with is not only unsafe, but downright dangerous. No one upstairs is listening to the guys on the ground who know what works and what doesnt, luckily the guys on the ground arent listening to the guys upstairs. In reality this whole situation looks too me like a hunt for some more revenue. I swear when the state coffers start to look a little low, somebody dusts off the California Vehicle Code, flops it down on a table and says, Well boys, what can we find in here that we havent been hassling people for lately? They find some obscure law that has no real point or purpose other than to give the boys in the white and black cars something to write tickets for, and therefore generate some income. The figure I saw was that the state, by not enforcing the added weight fees for flatbed pickup, was losing out on $50 million in revenue. James Fisher
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 22:37:03 +0000
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