Follow the Dirt Road In Your Soul to Humbug Mountain

Earning a Commercial Driver’s License Is No Free Ride

By Carol Mell, 8-28-08

	Here's the little red trolley that the government seems to suspect might be turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

You think Taos time is slow, wait until you visit the Motor Vehicle Division, where, like in doctor’s offices, they are careful never to keep a clock in sight for fear that someone might go postal, or this case, motor vehicular.

This summer I needed a paying gig so I hooked a summer job giving history tours and driving a red trolley. All I needed to get started going ding, ding, ding and ching, ching, ching, was a commercial driver’s license, or CDL.

That’s how I ended up at the MVD, where waiting is a required part of the CDL process.

Here’s how it goes.

First, you present papers showing that you either exist (a birth certificate) or that you are an American (a passport). My birth certificate was stolen decades ago, so I pulled out my passport only to find out it was about to expire. I had to finish the process before it expired.

“You take two written tests, one with 50 questions one with 20,” the clerk said.

I studied for one week but failed to find the 20 question stuff, about drawbridges, railroad crossings and hazardous materials, buried smack dab in the middle of a lot of stuff I didn’t need to know.

I missed the question about when to tell people to gather their belongings.

A. Just before you get off.

B. After a full stop.

C. As you careen over the cliff.

“You’ll have to wait 10 working days until you can take the test again,” the clerk said after I failed that bit.

Public safety has got to be served by my knowing that “no more than 500 pounds total of hazardous materials or labeled radioactive materials are allowed in the space occupied by people.” I guess an unlabeled warhead in the trunk is fine.

Two weeks later, I passed the written test as well as the eye test and I hit the jackpot in the ugliest picture contest.

“Have you had any other driver’s license in another state in the last 10 years?” the final questionnaire asked.

I put down Arizona.

“No,” the clerk said. “They only want to know about commercial licenses.”

“But it says any license.”

Exasperated, she turned to her computer. “Do you remember your license number?”

“I do.” They used our Social Security number in Arizona; you know, that number you are never supposed to give out to anybody, anytime.

The clerk gave me a paper learner’s permit and said, “You must wait seven days to take your driving test, but you can’t test without your hard copy license. Let us know if it doesn’t arrive in 20 days.”

It would be faster and easier to get a machine gun than a CDL.  No waiting periods there.

Two weeks, $150 and one rain day later, Ruben Baca was ready to give me my test. I asked why it took five weeks to get a CDL.

“This whole thing has gotten a lot harder since 9/11,” he answered. “I guess they think that someone might take a bus, fill it with explosives and drive it into the capitol building. Do they think someone who wants to blow up a building will bother to get a CDL? The guys who flew into the World Trade Center didn’t have pilot’s licenses.”

I’d never thought of the little red trolley as a danger to society but, with so many waiting periods, I can see why they worry.

Baca, a contractor, not an MVD employee, also informed me that the driving test was about to get harder.

“After July 1,” he said, “there will be eight driving tests and neither one of us will know which four you’ll have to pass until we open the sealed envelope.”

After knocking down a few dozen cones trying to parallel park, I headed back to the MVD for another round of eye tests, ugliest picture tests, and a second try at that previous license question.

“You have not had a license in another state in the last ten years?” a different attendant asked.

“Yes,” I said, “in Arizona, but I thought you were supposed to put only commercial licenses down.”

“It says any license,” she said in an exasperated tone like, “Can’t you read?”

“Free at last,” I said to my husband as we walked to the mailbox to mail my passport application on the last possible day. He handed me a plain white envelope. Could it be? Yes, it was a summons for six months of jury duty.

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