REGULAR DEPARTMENTS

2010 Tax Relief Act: Benefits for business  By Glenn Gelman
Business planning just got more certain with passage of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4853). The multi-billion dollar law extends, renews or enhances a large number of business tax incentives.  

Overweight violation brings a second citation  By Greg Dineen
A member’s 3-axle 10-wheeler was recently stopped by law enforcement and found to be overweight. The driver was cited for the axle overweight of 1,500 pounds. A week later, the company received a second citation in the mail for “owner's responsibility” for being 3,900 pounds over the declared gross registration weight. If you have older equipment that has been reconfigured, the changes may not be reflected on the manufacturer’s weight label on the driver side door and you could be susceptible to the same citation.

In this case, the truck was labeled 26,000 pounds, Class C, which means it was probably a 2-axle when it began life. At some point, it was modified into a 3-axle dump, or 10-wheeler. Whoever did the conversion should have gone to the CA Vehicle Code, looked at the “Bridge Law Formula” in Sections 35550-35558, and had a manufacturer change the door panel Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) rating to reflect the weight for the configuration.

For this 10-wheeler, a variety of issues needed to be considered, such as the front axle and tire weight specs, the overall length from the center of the front axle to the center of the tandem/driver axles, and even how the truck box is to be loaded front to back. Once these are determined, you can create a revised GVW label for the doorframe.

The other issue is determining the maximum registered weight this vehicle will carry or haul in combination. Say you have a properly determined GVW on a 10-wheeler, and its safe operational GVW is 50,000 pounds. You still need to consider if it will pull a trailer. If not, register the vehicle at 50,000 pounds, Class H, at a cost of $1,161 per year.

Now let’s say you buy a 17,000-pound backhoe and a 12,000- pound trailer to haul it. That’s another 29,000 pounds you have to register. For this combination, the total declared combined vehicle weight is 79,000 pounds, Class N, and your fees will be $2,064.

Unfortunately, the truck was registered at 26,000 pounds, because that was what was on the door panel. The owner argued they couldn’t register the truck over this weight and load it that way because it would be over the weight rating of the truck. That’s not the case in this situation and the owner is lucky the truck was only 3,900 pounds overweight and not 15,000-20,000 pounds.

To determine your truck’s legal weight configuration, get the California Dump Truck Owners Association’s Dump Truck Axles 101 booklet or go to your truck distributor. Then get a new weight sticker.