What is it like running a hopper?

There's a lot of hopper work in California, mostly agricultural stuff and almost all sets of doubles.. During rice harvest you'll see trucks on the road that you don't see any other time of the year but since they tend to stay on the back roads nobody bothers them too much.
We used to run hoppers but finding work for them in the winter and having to crew up every spring got to be too much of a hassle.
The immigrants took over most of the hopper work. They don't do a very good job but they haul cheap.
The worst thing we ever hauled was fish meal from Seattle to San Rafael. Fish meal dust turns into fish oil when it gets wet and it was always raining when we loaded and unloaded. There weren't the dust control laws like we have now. Think 90wt. fish slime. Loading was from an overhead bin with clamshell doors that tended to stick open. Unloading we'd windrow wide strips and the wheel loaders would push it up into piles. After a couple of weeks of that crap the drivers were ready to mutiny.

 

Ya that’s because they can run farm tags since it’s hopper and have all kinds of exemptions with HOS and stuff. I know a guy that had a farm name on his truck and his farm consisted of a few goats. It also pays off huge when filing your taxes because everything you buy is for your “farm.” Obviously there’s plenty of legit guys with farms using these trucks, but plenty of owner operators are doing it for all the loopholes.

 

Looks like 150 miles..........

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmc...lds/396526/agricultural-reference-guide_0.pdf

 

You have the Ag exemption that was part of the MAP-21 funding bill in 2012, and then you have trucks owned by the farm hauling their own products, and those are different things.

The FMCSA has a 34 page list of products and commodities that you can or can’t run under the ag exemption. If you can, then you get 150 air mile radius of the loading point, both on your way to the pickup and once you’re loaded. When you’re in the radius you’re aren’t required to keep a log, with an ELD I always just used PC and noted that I was under the MAP21 Ag Exemption. Since you’re exempt from a log if you are pulled over once you prove you’re under the exemption they can’t ask to see your log at all because the way it’s worded is that you’re not required to have one.

When I pulled pneumatic we hauled feed salt, it is exempt. If we were short on hours from food grade stuff we’d just run feed salt from Lyons KS back to Garden City. Usually 3 rounds and a nice nap would be enough time to get what we used to call a “rolling 34 hour reset” then we’d take off hauling food grade again. Or we had a loop where we could be off duty from Garden City, go load feed salt coming to Nebraska, unload that under exemption, immediately be exempt because of our next load, go load that product, and not have to start our log until we were about 4 hours from Garden City on the way back. It’s a pretty good tool to have as long as you know how to use it.

Actual farm trucks it depends on the state. Take South Dakota, it’s basically a free for all. No CDL, no inspections, nothing. I know of high school age kids running down the road with 13 axle grain double grossing 150k.

 

I see farm plated trucks out of Arkansas running IFTA. I get some may be close to the state line but I’ll see them in Kansas or Nebraska. Slippery slope to only save the cost of an apportioned plate in my opinion and hard to prove roadside if it’s their product or not depending on what it is.

Arkansas also lets the guys pulling grain for hire run a farm plate. I’m sure other products as well but grain is most common in my area. The driver must have CDL, med card etc if your for hire. Farm owned trucks driven by farm employees are not required to have a CDL.

 

They'll probably hire you if you have a CDL and a pulse.
Ag is usually cheap. Prime is usually cheap. See where this is going?

 

The better companies probably aren't advertising or hiring much. Word of mouth or needing to know someone who will give you a good reference.