Use Of Frequency Scanner Equipment In Commerical Vehicles

I don't believe the FMCSR would be the problem. Several states have laws concerning scanner use as well as many municipalities. Most deal strictly with scanning police frequencies but some cover any frequencies assigned by the FCC to police, fire and in some cases any department of the state or local governments. Generally the laws/ordinances do not differentiate between private vehicles and CMV's. You would need to check on every jurisdiction you enter.

 

I have an Icom v8000 that I bought for running the Alcan highway thru Canada, to communicate on Ladd 1. Since its in my truck I usually leave it on scan while running the lower 48 and have found it generaly more annoying than entertaining. Most police bands have moved to the 900 mhz and my radio only goes from 137 to 174 mhz. The weather channels are nice and once in a while I can pick up some ham radio broadcasts. As for legalities, Canada requires a licence to talk, but after calling industry Canada, they told me they can't issue a licence to a non Canadian, so I guess they saved me some money LoL. As for having a vhf here in the states, I haven't a clue if what the various state laws are. In the states I never talk on my vhf, just listen.

 

The only Federal regulation I am aware of is 393.71 prohibiting Radar Detectors or any device that detects or messes with speed measuring technology.

Scanners can be banned by States or municipalities, but I do not know of any that have.

 

If you have internet access this is free

http://www.radioreference.com/

 

Indiana has a ban also.

 

Can I have a radar gun in my truck ? So when all those super truckers fly by me I can turn it on and all their "birds" will start "chirping" and they all hit their brakes and try to squeze back in front of me as I put a little foot in it and hang em out to dry in the left lane...

 

I go to many places that use the CB for loading/unloading communications....and very few of those places like to post what channel they are running. In this situation, my scanner comes in handy...set it to scan the CB frequencies and as soon as they key up, I know what channel they are running. Also works great when you run into a pack of trucks that are on a different channel and need to relay information to them.

The scanner is also the only weather radio I have capable of receiving the broadcasts over the weather bands.

Always make sure if it has a state name associated with the police frequencies that it is set to a state which allows scanner use before you turn it off. Better yet, do that and then switch it to scan CB or weather channels before you turn it off. If they see the scanner during an inspection, and turn it on, they will see that it was only scanning CB or weather channels and you might be able to explain that away. If you are in a state which prohibits scanner use, and they turn it on and it is scanning their police frequencies, that is a little harder to explain.

Basically, use common sense.