Shedding Light on Foggy CDL Requirements
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Shedding Light on Foggy CDL Requirements By Kim Mann, General Counsel to NATM, Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary NATM headquarters receives frequent calls from trailer manufacturing members asking why the local police are insisting on commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) for drivers operating tow vehicles pulling their trailers. They then describe their particular set of circumstances. Prompting these questions are complaints the members have received from their customers and dealers about state troopers and local enforcement officers pulling over drivers towing their trailers they thought did not require CDLs and their customers had purchased with that same understanding. So, what’s going on here? Overly-aggressive law enforcement at work? Dealers and/or customers ill-informed about CDL laws? A combination of both?
What appears to be behind these inquiries is the vagueness of the CDL laws and the general confusion and disagreement this vagueness naturally generates. So, let’s try to clear up some of this confusion. Starting at the beginning, Congress has charged the U.S. DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) with responsibility for implementing the federal CDL laws through federal regulations and has directed the states to issue CDLs in conformity with these regulations. The FMCSA’s CDL regulations appear in the Code of Federal Regulations, 49 C.F.R. Part 383. The FMCSA requires drivers to have a CDL – either a Class A, a Class B, or Class C (for transporting passengers or hazardous materials) – in order to operate defined types of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce. To clarify its regulations, the FMCSA publishes a graphic illustrating the various vehicle configurations constituting the groups of CMVs requiring a Class A or Class B CDL. That graphic can be found to the left. State and local law enforcement often refer to it for guidance. The FMCSA requires drivers to have a CDL to operate a motor vehicle if that vehicle meets the FMCSA definition of a “commercial motor vehicle” and is used in “commerce.” The FMCSA defines both terms in 49 C.F.R. § 383.5. The great misunderstanding out there, within the trailer industry and probably within the law enforcement community, about the CDL requirements springs from those two definitions, particularly of “commerce.”
FMCSA's graphic illustrating the various vehicle configurations constituting the groups of CMVs requiring a Class A or Class B CDL.
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May/June 2018
The FMCSA defines a “commercial motor vehicle” as a motor vehicle, or a combination of motor vehicles, in certain GVWR-based configurations, when used in “commerce” to transport “property or passengers.” The physical configuration component of the CMV definition is very mechanical, very objective.
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