Does commercial vehicle include pick-ups?
A commercial vehicle is any vehicle requiring the yellow inspection sticker, and that COULD include a normal light-duty pick-up, if it's registered as commercial (I've seen the yellow sticker on a F150). My >8500lb GVWR van is registered personal and doesn't have that yellow inspection sticker. There's a certain bigger GVWR beyond which it has to be registered commercial.
It's complicated. (Too complicated.)
The person answering the most in this thread.. AnarchyDD.. says they are a MTO officer.
MOT defines a commercial vehicle as:Does commercial vehicle include pick-ups?
He's wrong about the license plate colours, though. My registered-for-personal-use, >8500lb GVWR van has a license plate with black letters, because it is not a "passenger" vehicle". Whether a vehicle is a "passenger" vehicle or not, is different from whether it is a "commercial" vehicle or not. I'm pretty sure the "commercial" classification cannot coexist with the "passenger" classification on the same vehicle, but a non-passenger vehicle need not be commercial.
Commercial registration = yellow sticker (and annual inspections).
edit: Apparently black numbers means "commercial vehicle as defined in HTA" but not necessarily registered for commercial use (yellow sticker), and according to that interpretation, if you have a vehicle with a black-numbers license plate (pickups, vans, Ford Maverick ...) you are good to go for towing two trailers as long as you of course meet all the other regulations - combination less than 23 metres / 75 ft long, lights, license plates, etc.
Transport trucks with two 53-foot trailers in tow. Longer than 75 feet, no?
edit 2: You can not legally tow two trailers with a Chrysler minivan registered as passenger, but you can legally tow two trailers with a Bell-Tel Chrysler minivan registered as commercial ... Same unibody, same powertrain, same brakes ...
So if the PU is registered under 4500kg GVW it is not a commercial vehicle... but of course there's more to it than that... this is Ontario.
What plate you get is dictated by the VIN. A 2 door pickup will always have a "commercial" plate, a pickup with seatbelts behind the driver's seat (there is a whole big regulation about this, but it comes down to a "box" on the screen on the computer at the MOT), that is less than 4500kg can have "passenger" plates. A pickup with a seatbelt behind the driver's seat, that is more than 4500kg will get a commercial plate, but you can get a "personal and private use only" endorsement and "legally", for MOT purposes, it's a passenger car EXCEPT it has a 4500kg GVW
There WAS a time when you had to register the vehicle as commercial IF you used it for ANY commercial purpose... so taxi cabs had commercial plates, so did delivery vehicles (including pizza or chinese food) and the like.BUT, if you’re using it to haul a trailer that results in renumeration of any sort (cutting lawns for money, or a $50 prize at a horse show that cost you $500 to attend…
For commercial vehicle registered over 4500kg GVW. Under 4500kg no yellow sticker, no annual inspection... AND you can get blue passenger car plates for it (IF it has a seatbelt in the back... doesn't NEED a seat, just the belt)Commercial registration = yellow sticker (and annual inspections).
The whole "commercial vehicle" thing is another gong show, as Brian demonstrates trying to make sense of it all when you get into the nuances of even the colour of the licence plate.
Yeah, a pickup truck with a black licence plate is a "commercial vehicle". But is it really? You can register a 10,000# GVWR vehicle at 2500# if you want and avoid some aspects of not needing inspection stickers and such, and that might fly, or it might not depending on what LEO you bump into. It’s also not legal in many regards but serviceOntario will still do it for you since half the people working there don’t really understand the system themselves.
You can be anything you want to be on the Internet. The fact they doesn't even understand plate colours suggests that no, he actually isn't an MTO officer.
Not to say that an MTO officer or OPP officer wouldn't still give you bad information still however...because it's a mess of a question.
I always like to come full circle to asking them the same questions I posed earlier in this thread however:
If a D and AR class driver can specifically only haul ONE trailer, as clearly specified on the Ontario DL classes ("trailer" is always singular, and the class AR even lays it out specifically as a restriction), and the class A is the only one that specifies trailers (plural), where in any sort of logical outcome can someone draw the conclusion that in the face of this information of both D and AR being restricted from hauling multiple trailers, that it's apparently hunky-dory for someone with a class G? Especially since both a class D and AR licence classes require education and testing to obtain.
They usually don't have an answer to that question. And if they do, there's a lot of "Umm" and "Hmmm" involved.
If the vehicle has factory rating of over 4500 it needs a sticker no matter what it is registered as to add to the confusion.For commercial vehicle registered over 4500kg GVW. Under 4500kg no yellow sticker, no annual inspection... AND you can get blue passenger car plates for it (IF it has a seatbelt in the back... doesn't NEED a seat, just the belt)
There was a time I was pulling my buddy's Super Stock drag racer all over the country with a minivan, and the weigh tickets were close to the GVW of the truck, which had a PUO endorsement... which RAISED the GVW from the factory GVW, almost doubled the GVW.It's tough to find a solid answer..
The personal and private use only endorsement can get you around that on select vehicles... just to further add to the confusionIf the vehicle has factory rating of over 4500 it needs a sticker no matter what it is registered as to add to the confusion.