drivesa 2019 Ram 3500 for now, shopping for a Super C on the M2
Lubbock. my wife Linda and I are shopping for a Super C and the ones we keep looking at are on the Freightliner M2 106 with GVWRs right around 33,000 pounds. Seneca and Accolade mostly. we want to tow her Wrangler behind it, so call it 38,000 combined.
a guy at church told me i need a CDL to drive one in Texas. a salesman in Amarillo told me i do not need anything. both of them said it with total confidence.
and the air brakes. i have driven my 3500 with a gooseneck plenty, but i have never touched a truck with air brakes. is that a separate endorsement for a motorhome or is that only for commercial?
snowbird_since_2016Long haulerMesa, AZ
drives2016 Dynamax DX3 37BH on a Freightliner M2 106, towing a 2014 CR-V
neither of them is quite right, which is about normal.
no CDL for a motorhome you use for yourself, that is federal and pretty consistent. but Texas is one of the states with its own non-commercial classes. last i read it, a single vehicle over 26,000 GVWR puts you in a Class B, the non-CDL version, and towing something over 10,000 behind it pushes you to Class A. a Wrangler is nowhere near 10,000 so you would be looking at B.
Arizona, where we live now, does not ask for anything extra. Wyoming did not when we were there either. so the answer really is state by state, and Texas happens to be one of the stricter ones.
freightliner_m2_techFull timerGaffney, SC
drivesother people's M2 106s all week, a 2015 Dynamax DX3 37RB on weekends
on the air brakes. for a private motorhome you generally do not need the air brake endorsement, that lives on the CDL side. you should learn them anyway, because the endorsement is not what keeps you alive on a downgrade.
things i see owners not know, every week, on M2 coaches that come into our shop:
drain the air tanks. most coaches have an automatic drain on the wet tank but a pull cable or a petcock on the others, and i have pulled a cup of water out of tanks on coaches with 20,000 miles.
the air dryer cartridge is a service item. it goes in a couple of years at most, and a lot of people have never had it changed.
know what the low air warning sounds like and what pressure it comes on at. look at the gauges before you release the parking brake, every time.
watch the pushrods. if you can get somebody to show you how to check stroke on the brake chambers, it is a fifteen minute lesson that tells you if your brakes are out of adjustment.
a lot of community colleges near a truck school will do a short air brake class for non drivers. worth a Saturday.
mod_bev_tModeratorCoeur d'Alene, ID
drives2017 Dynamax Isata 5 35DBD on a Ford F-550, 6.7 Power Stroke
Idaho asks nothing extra for our Isata on the F-550, which is well under 26,000 anyway. California is the other one that comes up a lot here: last time i looked, a motorhome over 40 feet needs a non-commercial Class B there, and a heavy trailer behind a regular license gets complicated fast. people towing a 10,000 pound trailer behind a Super C in California should read up before they go.
for the Texas question the real answer lives with Texas DPS, which handles driver licenses in your state, not the county tax office. their site is dps.texas.gov and the driver license section has the Class A and B exempt rules and the handbook. please post what you find, this question comes up every week.
cummins_67_curiousOPDay tripperLubbock, TX
drivesa 2019 Ram 3500 for now, shopping for a Super C on the M2
went down to the DPS office on 82nd. took about an hour and a half of my life. the short version:
yes on the Class B for anything over 26,000 GVWR. there is a written test, and the skills test is in the vehicle you plan to drive, so obviously that comes after we buy one and not before. the lady at the counter was nicer about all this than i expected. she said they get a lot of retirees in my exact spot every fall.
the guy at church was wrong about the CDL. the salesman was wrong about needing nothing. i told Linda and she said she could have told me that for free.
retired_lineman_rvWeekenderMedford, OR
drives2020 Nexus Ghost 36DS on a Freightliner M2 106, towing a 2010 Ranger 4x4
late to this one. Oregon asks for nothing extra on our 33,000 lb Ghost, but i had a CDL for thirty years running bucket and digger trucks so i came in with the air brake habits already.
i will say what everybody thinks and nobody says in these threads. the license is the easy part. the hard part is backing a 37 foot coach into a state park site that was laid out in 1962, at dusk, with your spouse waving her arms in a pattern only she understands. get some radios. go practice in an empty church lot. the license test will feel like nothing after that.
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