THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW

BY RUSSELL TURNER

TICKETS AND LEARNING THE HARD WAY

We Americans are very fortunate to have the quality of food that we all enjoy. People in the rest of the world are not nearly as fortunate. At times there are problems with our food supply, but for the most part they are minor. The success of our agricultural system is not attributable to the large corporate farms.  Small family farms are responsible for the success.

Over 70% of farms owned in the United States are owned by small family operations.  The average rancher has 25-50 head of beef cow pairs per farm. Many of these small ranchers take their livestock to the market once or twice per year. I can remember when most farmers had pickups with stock racks on them or had trucks to haul their cows to the market. Over the years, fewer and fewer people use stock racks on pickups or trucks.  Most people now use trailers pulled by ¾ or 1-ton trucks. There are some new regulations that can affect the way we use our gooseneck stock trailers.

Small family operations can be subject to the same regulations as commercial operators. Any vehicle weighing more than 10,000 pounds that does business across state lines is subject to new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations. Most dually pickups pulling a gooseneck trailer are possible targets for an inspection and a citation. Anyone who has ever hauled cattle or other farm products knows that 10,000 pounds can be reached very quickly. Here in Oklahoma, if a farmer doesn’t cross state lines and is less than 150 miles from home, the combined weight limit can be up to 26,000 pounds. Under the new regulation, if a rancher travels over 150 miles he must have a commercial drivers license and other family members or hired help cannot assist in the driving. There have been attempts to raise those limits.  There should be some bills in the next legislative session to address this issue.

Farmers who travel across state lines need to be aware of the new regulation before they have to learn it the hard way with a traffic ticket. Some information is available on the Internet at www.dps.state.ok.us . Until (when and if) some common sense can be applied to these new regulations, hard working producers shouldn’t have to learn about it the hard way.