I sincerely hope that I have not misled anyone here, I had no intentions of trying to skirt around the laws, if the GVW of these vehicles is not enough to legally haul my load then I will simply have to find a truck to get the job done.
to address the issue of bringing a truck up to date, by law if that truck is compliant as of the date of manufacture then you are "grandfathered in" you just simply have to maintain it or if need be then one may have to add a few running lights, placards, or upgrading various add on components. From what I have been reading, I have found nothing illegal about running an old truck. My personal feeling on the matter is that if you are compliant, after your yearly inspections, and you maintain that vehicle to roadworthy operating standards, keep your log up to date, and and you are still getting pulled over for routine safety inspections, to what you feel is abnormal amount of inspections, then this is pure harrassment. legal or otherwise it is harrassment. This would seem to be especially so if this were to happen to me because I only have one DOT inspector assigned to our area.
An interesting point was brought up regarding farmers and cdl's. It is the same in MN. you do not need to have a cdl to drive for farm related purposes, so long as you are not transporting liquid of more than 150 gallons, and I think you cannot cross state lines, and a few other restrictions. The big exception to this rule is combination units which require a cdl no matter what. IE tractor and trailer. And yes the way I understand it I could technicly get a truck and drive it for "my own farm related purposes" but I'm thinking that in the long run would be counter productive due to the fact that as soon as I go to a site, I'd be in violation because the business is commercial even though I do agricultural clearing and I own my own farm. I'm not trying to bend the rules here or get into one of those shades of grey situations, I'm simply trying to figure out if these truck will do what I need them to do, and if not for one reason, will they still work for other aspects of my farm and business. so far I've ruled out trying to tow my Cat on a pintle hitch trailer behind anything like a five ton of some model, but I have not ruled out using a military truck (917 was mentioned earlier) and hooking it to a low boy and using that instead of buying civilian trucks.............this idea may change as I learn more about them, but for now I'm settling on the idea of a five ton for site work. As for getting the cat moved........well maybe i should ask if anyone knows of a fairly cheap semi and trailer?
Insurance I think may be something rather easily dealt with, onsite I need only my business liability insurance to cover damages to my own equipment or landowners' property.
I think I can work in such a fashion as to only insure one truck at a time. For instance if I buy a five ton I will need insurance to drive it to the site. Once the second truck is purchased that will be the one insured and I will haul the five ton to the site instead of driving it. Simple enough, tags and reg for one vehicle but I still have two vehicles at my disposal. The reality of my situation is that once on site I never move any debris off site and so never have to run on a road to get to a disposal point (burn pile, or ditch) but getting the Cat to the site is a problem and I hope to learn about some possibilities for Legal transport of that Cat.
Transportation of this Cat usually means moves of no more than 10 to 15 miles. At this point I would like to ask what model Military truck would get the job done? My max mileage in a year may only be about 2500 miles or so on this truck due to the short nature of the hauls that I have. Many times I'm only going a mile or two, but I move a lot. Last year my moving expenses averaged about 200 per drop charge, and the mileage was less than 900 miles. My total for the year was around 6,000-6250 for drop charges. I'm thinking that if I have to move further out to a job a time or two I can still hire a professional hauler or see about trucking with my competitors which I'm sure they'd be glad to do just see me gone a while. My main concern is these short expensive hauls. My customers are not at all happy with the charges and I think I can do a lot better. The Cdl will have to be obtained so all ideas here are welcome. (dumps, semi) (whatever model will tow legally, and whatever trailer will fit will be considered).
Thanks in advance
We have not driven it enough yet to get a feel for the mileage, but you can see it won't be much.
What I can' figure out is why they'd be jealous when they were all turning up their noses at the stuff I'm doing. 
