Do I need a CDL

Do I need a CDL

 When I first went to work for a rather large company I had a guy come up to me and asked me “hey Dan do I need a CDL to drive this truck?”

 He's driving a 1 ton dually pickup pulling a gooseneck trailer.

 I said, “let's walk over and look at the truck,  so I  can show you how you know if you need a CDL or not.”

We walked over to the truck and started looking at it. We noticed that the GVWR on the truck was 14K.   Then we walked back and looked at the trailer. The trailer was rated 22.5k.  

I asked him what those two numbers added together equal.   he started to take off his shoes and I encouraged him to get his calculator out. just kidding.   

Anyways the GCWR of the truck and trailer are 36.5k lb.

We talked about how anytime a vehicle or combination of vehicles is rated over 26k a CDL is required to operate it.  

“Then he said hey let's go check out my buddies truck over here”

The truck was an older one ton dually its GVWR was 12k lb he was hooked up to a trailer rated at 14k lb.  

I told the guy to do the math you looked at me and he said “dude that's only rated at 26k lb even.  so my buddy doesn't have to have a CDL to drive this truck but if I hooked up to the same trailer with my newer truck I'd still have to have a class A CDL.”

I told him he was spot-on.

The entire point of this is that not all vehicles have the same GVWR.

With the evolution of the automotive industry their rating Vehicles higher than they used to be, therefore if you buy a new vehicle and have the same trailer it may require a CDL to operate that vehicle.

Today take a few seconds to go out and check your entire fleet, make a spreadsheet of all the GVWR of all of your trailers, and all of your pickups.   do a quick calculation to make sure that everything stays below 26k pounds or you have CDL Drivers in all those vehicles that combined have a GCWR of over 26k.

If you still have questions, reach out to us let us know how we can help you.