DavidMJU

As expected, we broke the DMV. Not quite sure where we ended up yet - they've gotten it wrong, but maybe wrong in our favor. I was also renewing my CM1 at the same time, and that threw them completely off in trying to add Restriction 41 to the C and also give me the permit for non-commercial A to go take the driving test. We aren't sure yet if we will end up right under or right over the 15,000lb limit with what we buy, so wanted to get both - if we buy under, we are all set. And if we buy over we can go do the driving test. For a moment it sounded like I was going to walk out with a non-commercial A with no tests as the supervisor was explaining to the 5 (!!) people who were involved at that point that I'd have to do a driving test for the fifth wheel (10000-15000) on the class C, but I could just do the written test to do a class A. (Yes, please do that). Unfortunately someone corrected them. So now I have the permit for the class A to go do the driving test... But I also seem to now have a weird CM1 license that has a new restriction - not the fifth wheel 41, but code 71-See Over. I'm waiting for the online records to update to see what they ended up put in the notes for 71 on the CM1... I think its the language that usually goes on the back of the non-commercial class A, which will be hilarious. I'm going to move to Nevada at the end of the year I think!

It is sounding like we are going to go the Class A license route, though we're still shopping around deciding what we want to buy and will look at buying in a couple months. From what we are seeing that are under 15,000 GVWR we think will end up too small for us for full-time use. If we get the Class A non-commercial in California, does that just carry over to wherever we end up moving our licenses or is there retesting? We've not decided where that will be yet, but maybe TX if we use the service from Escapees - or NV if we set up storage there or buy a spot. I'm guessing there will need to be a lot of thought around that decision when we get to it. I was really surprised at how the Class A non-commercial here only really gives you RVs. In Nevada I could have towed around my entire backyard of rocks.

Thank you both for the advice! I'll ask around and some of the commercial operations that rent trucks for the day if we could instead pay for a similar service, but using our own equipment. Or maybe if someone I know that has a CDL will be out this way. I had thought it had to be the same kind of license exactly. And I hear you on getting out of here. We've not decided yet where we want to "live", other than "not here". The state is pretty serious about going after people who work here but don't live here, unless you can prove that you aren't living here. So the plan is to go visit a bunch of places over the next year that are "not here", keep a log and receipts and then officially "move" to wherever we wouldn't mind coming back to periodically.

First post here. We're getting ready to make the plunge to fulltiming and are currently shopping for a fifth wheel toyhauler - we both have motorcycles and having a "shop" is appealing since we both have hobbies which could use the space. We seem to have a lot of this figured out, but aren't sure what to do about CA's laws regarding fifth wheels >15,000GVWR. The ones we like come in at 17,000-18,000 which is no problem for our truck, but is a problem for our license class. We won't be able to change domicile until sometime after this adventure because of my current employment (it was enough work to convince them to let me do this - I don't want to add more work for them just yet). So this means we are stuck with following CA's laws and from what I understand, we would need a non-commercial class A license to be able to legally do this. Cool, I thought. There are places nearby that will rent us a truck and trailer for the driving test, so not a problem. But then I discovered that in CA the non-commercial class A ONLY includes RVs (or a livestock trailer if I go buy a farm), but not any kind of cargo hauling vehicle. So we couldn't just use one of the commercial options to go get the license to then go get the fifth wheel. We have a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. It seems we would need to get the non-commercial class A permit, then the fifth wheel AND have someone with one of these rare unicorn licenses to come ride along for the DMV test, because of course they check how you got there. Has anyone else dealt with this? Is there somewhere that you can hire an RV and driver to go take the test? Is there another loophole? -David