Steve, in California it's all about the money. I had an employee get a ticket on my new ladder truck for several items, all related to not having a carrier permit.
I won't bore you with the details but going to court was an eye-opening experience. Haven't been there in 30 years or so. There was nothing but people driving without licenses, suspended licenses, no insurance, etc. and the judge was just giving fines based on how much he thought he could get out of the people. I mean there were some that were black/white as far as the fine, but most of the infractions gave him latitude and in several cases the identical ticket had completely different fines attached to it. If you looked poor you paid less, guys in suits were getting killed.
One guy had a suspended license, no insurance, and paid about $300 total. The fine for me not having a carrier permit (which I didn't even know what it was, who was required to have it, and the DMV that runs the program didn't require it to register the truck) was over $3K. I met with the DA and got it reduced to $600, but since I was self-employed and the truck is about $90K and needed for me to do business they went for the throat. Even though I convinced the DA that there was no way I could know it was required and the DMV didn't even catch it with the vehicle in front of them for inspection to get it registered. Bottom line, the only way to get the fine removed was if I wanted to go to court over it, and they guessed that $600 was cheap enough to get me to plead out and get it done with.
Good luck, yours likely won't be as frustrating as mine.
Jody
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