3/4 and 1 ton trucks.
Diesel mostly, gas welcome.
one i should know by now. 2020 Ram 3500 dually, 6.7 HO, door says GVWR 14,000. 24 ft Eby stock trailer, two 7,000 lb axles, so 14,000 on the tag. i haul our calves to the sale barn in Fort Pierre and some of the neighbor's, and he gives me gas money.
my brother in law says the minute money changes hands i am for hire and need a CDL and a DOT number. i have farm plates on the pickup. who is right?
usual disclaimer, nobody here is a lawyer, and the people who actually decide are your state's motor carrier folks. the federal rules are on fmcsa.dot.gov. as i understand it, a class A comes into it when the combination is rated over 26,000 and the trailer alone is rated over 10,000, and you are operating in commerce. there is a farm carve out for farmers hauling their own stuff within a set distance. the gas money is exactly the part your brother in law is poking at.
Montana side, we lean on the covered farm vehicle rule. your own cattle, farm plates, inside 150 air miles, no CDL. start taking money for the neighbor's calves and it gets murky, and nobody at a scale house cares that it was only gas money. what i do: the neighbor hauls his own and borrows my trailer.
we got pulled in by a motor carrier officer east of Aberdeen with the shop's F-450 and a 22 ft flatbed carrying a skid steer. what he cared about was the tag on the trailer, not the scale. that plate says 14,000, then as far as he is concerned it is 14,000 even when it is empty.
called the motor carrier office in Pierre. patient guy. my own calves on farm plates, fine. the neighbor's calves for money, even gas money, is for hire, and then it is the whole package, DOT number, med card, and with my combo a class A. so i am doing what ranch_truck does. i haul his for nothing and he buys supper in Fort Pierre.
bumping because i just went through the North Dakota version with a skid steer trailer for the plow business, which is commerce, no way around it. the answer lined up with this thread. the rating on the trailer tag is what they go by. i ended up getting the class A, took the skills test in my own truck and trailer. the whole thing cost less than one ticket would have.