Hot Shot drivers or info??

Eddyj · Jul 17, 2014

You have a flatbed on a pickup or piece of equipment on a flatbed and your not displaying dot # it's like a giant red pull-me-over flag. My pickups and straight trucks get " random " dot stopped more than my semis. They know they can fine you for not displaying #'s. no logbook. No medical card ( drug test ) which is huge now.
I've been chased twice in mo and il for not going through scales with pickup loads.
Just saying they will shut it down until you comply with everything. So if having you material on time is critical you may want to go with a pro.

Bronco Buster · Jul 17, 2014

There is a thread on here somewhere that a guy got stopped with a dually pulling a dually trailer (30,000# gross weight combined) and was ticketed for not having CDL. It does not matter what your gross weight is or what you are hauling if your truck and trailer can legally haul over 26,000# you have to have CDL and a medical card. If you are hauling anything other than agricultural or personal property you have to have DOT numbers.

tyldyl12 · Jul 17, 2014

Re: Re: Re: Hot Shot drivers or info??

Bronco Buster said:
There is a thread on here somewhere that a guy got stopped with a dually pulling a dually trailer (30,000# gross weight combined) and was ticketed for not having CDL. It does not matter what your gross weight is or what you are hauling if your truck and trailer can legally haul over 26,000# you have to have CDL and a medical card. If you are hauling anything other than agricultural or personal property you have to have DOT numbers.

^^^^^^^Unfortunately, THIS^^^^^^^^^^

KyTrash · Jul 17, 2014

Eddyj said:
It's all fun and games until d.o.t. is at your window. ....

Most truthful statement that I have ever heard.

bradzuki · Jul 17, 2014

HMMMMMM......very interesting. Guess I'm up the creek then. Thank you all for the input. I have admitted several times that I'm very ignorant in this area. I've never had work like this so this is all very new to me. You guys are helping immensely. Guess I'll have to stick to farming out the loads and keep myself busy in the shop. I was looking forward to hitting the road every once in a while, especially the first few loads so we can get some money built up. :driving:

Keep the info coming, I like learning. I had to turn in another quote today so that's 3 quotes in 3 days. I'm gonna be keeping someone busy.

The-Boss · Jul 17, 2014

X2 on good info. I would be interested in more details. I thought about hot shotting maybe one load a month just for some extra cash. Seemed like it wouldn't be worth it unless it was almost weekly. Not sure what you could right off tax wise if it was a LLC. The commercial tag and insurance are not cheap but I don't have numbers. Does anyone know what all is needed and some cost along with ways to offset those costs. Also are there sites you can go to for finding a load.

bradzuki · Jul 19, 2014

Spent yesterday talking to different folks and getting more information on this. Monday we are going to talk to the THP and get solid answers.
So far, my understanding is that as long as you have a trailer rated over 10,001lbs then you SHOULD have a CDL license. Not completely necessary but you should. So as long as our material will fit on our equipment trailer (rated @ 10,000lbs) then we can legally haul it wherever we want with no CDL as long as there is a tag on the trailer.
For now, any load that is over 20ft long we are going to have to pay someone to deliver for us. Once I get solid info from THP Monday we will see what we have to do as far as truck, trailer, and us hiring a licensed CDL driver to drive our truck to deliver our material.

5onrocks · Jul 19, 2014

If pulling with a personal vehicle or an unmarked company truck then yes, you can get away with not CDL. If the truck is marked, you need a DOT physical and you have to keep a log book filled out even with a trailer less than 10k. There are lots of gray areas that you can get away with but the fines can be steep if you get busted. You will also get different answers from different State Troopers. I asked a DOT officer a question, I followed his advice and wound up shut down with over a grand in fines a few days later in NC. Good luck. My old company decided it was easier and cheaper to hire the hauling out unless we had something very urgent.