There’s an interesting story out of Elyria, Ohio about how the laws of the state require a CDL A license for drivers if the vehicle driven is over 10,000 lbs.  Just learning about the law, they have a shortage of drivers in the city to clean up fall leaves.

Those people who are cross-trained for maintenance and truck driving jobs in ohio have a job this fall in Elyria, Ohio.  They are the lucky ones in this economy.

The story goes like this:

The street department in Elyria needs leaves picked up in the fall.  So every year, all of the city employees go out and drive the dump trucks around and pick up the leaves with a leaf trailer connected to the back of the dump truck.  The city of Elyria has eight dump trucks and the crews of city employees consist of four to five men and women.  So about 35 to 40 employees are working on picking up leaves every day.

One of the employees who had just received his CDL Class A driver’s permit learned in class that if a vehicle driven is over 10,000, the driver needs to hold a CDL A license.  The dump trucks hit 10,000 lbs. when the trailer for carrying the leaves is connected.  Once this was brought to the cities attention, they knew they had a problem.

Only about 30 of the 40 employees hold a CDL Class A license in all of the city workers.  Employees had to be moved around from different departments like Parks and Recreation and Sanitation, so as to not have to hire new employees for the fall clean up.  The city is still looking for employees who have a CDL Class A license and can do maintenance work as well.

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Here is where we saw the full story: http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2010/11/06/leaf-season-demands-bigger-license/