Help, rolled a truck, will it stop me from driving?

Murder is obviously wrong...doesn't take a genius to know that. Do yourself a favor, though, and walk around at the mall or city park and just ask random people if they have ever heard of the FMCSA or if they know what that is. Nobody outside of trucking will know. Hell, your results would only be slightly better asking around in the various shipping/receiving offices that you go into. Do you really think anyone off the street knows ANYTHING about §383.23? Even on these forums, you have people IN THE INDUSTRY who hold a CDL who can't even give you the official definition of a CMV. They don't have a clue what triggers the need for a log book, medical card, or even a CDL...just that they have all of that, so they think EVERYBODY getting paid to drive (their definition of a commercial driver) needs to have them. So much misinformation exists in this industry because the rules only apply to certain people in certain situations, and exempts others in under some circumstances, and NOBODY seems willing to read the rules for themselves so they just wing it based off what they heard somebody else say. So you get a company owner (who ought to know better...it is his business) who is operating under a false assumption, assuring a guy needing a job that he's "legal" to drive the truck with just a regular driver's license. Guy appreciates the job offer and takes it, not knowing any better because he's never worked in the industry before and has no clue the FMCSA exists, let alone what it does. He's perfectly happy in his new job, able to support his family and pay the bills...until there is an incident and he finds out the hard way that his boss was wrong when he said it was legal for him to be driving the truck. Now he gets to listen to know-it-alls on the internet tell him how he should've knowm better when he asks for help. Meanwhile, his boss is paying for him to get that CDL he should have had, and the incident is a learning experience for BOTH him AND the boss. He still has his job. His question was "will this stop me from driving" and the CORRECT answer is "no". He didn't ask about future job prospects down the road, but whether the operating a CMV without a CDL would prevent the state from issuing him that CDL when he finished the school his boss was paying for. While yes, it IS considered a "serious offense", it does NOT disqualify him until conviction on a second serious offense within 3 years. The state WILL issue him the CDL and he can get back to driving.

 

If you think the CDL laws are for safety, you're fooling yourself. Said dump truck could have had farm tags and hauling grain and you wouldn't have to have a CDL. Same truck, just change the tags and the cargo.

Then you have the retired folks that go out and buy a motor home grossing 60k who have never driven anything bigger than a minivan. No CDL required.

If it's so dangerous for a person without proper training and licensing to drive a truck, why are the above mentioned people exempt?

I don't blame the guy for driving without a CDL. He got caught and will pay the price for that, hopefully it won't be too harsh and he can get into a position where he can drive legally.

 

Another thing ( at least in TN), most of FMCSA doesn't even apply if the truck is running state tags and not crossing state lines. Most of outfits like this aren't even required to have a DOT number.

I don't even know how they would apply CSA points without a DOT number to apply it to.

 

Maybe my question has already been asked and answered but I'm not sifting through 4 pages to find out.

How does the ticketing officer know you were overweight if you flipped the truck? I'm assuming your cargo was spread out on the ground?

 

I have no doubt some company will hire you if you have a pulse. It my be possible if you don't.

 

I wondered the same thing. If I were the officer though, I'd look at his weight ticket from where he picked up the material.

 

Who said anything about safety? My point is he's driving a Vehicle he's not legally allowed to drive. That's not debatable. The argument that "I didn't know I wasn't allowed to drive it" (which the OP never said by the way. Everyone else is making that argument for him, but for all we know he knew perfectly well it was illegal) is no excuse. You took control of it, you're responsible. Has nothing to do with "CDL laws" being safe or not.

But to answer the question, for at least the 10-12th time, no, this won't keep him from going to school. Just changing jobs for a few years

 

I agree! I was young at the time (22 or 23), and went to that company straight from pizza delivery. Never even crossed my mind to check into what laws applied to me. Figured if I wasn't allowed to drive something, the company wouldn't have hired me to do so. We were running 3 states, 16+ hour shifts and no log books. Could have been a real trainwreck. I got inspected one time, in the 4 years I was with them. They asked for my log book, and when I told them I was local, they let it go. That's when I started researching the law and ended up getting my CDL. It's no surprise the company is no longer in the delivery business.

 

If there was a load ticket in the truck and it was for tonnage above and beyond the GVWR.. yeah, he could get ticketed for being over weight.. but that's purely a guess