How did you know it was time to sell?

[CliffordK]

The city sent her a certified notice to immediately remove hazardous trees stating the city would do it and lien the property after 10 days... ever notice how these things always arrive on a Friday afternoon?

The surveyor came with maps and called the city from the site and spoke the city surveyor and said the trees in question are on city land...

eventually the city came and removed the trees...

I'm sorry, this is plain rude, giving an elderly widow 10 days to get rid of trees that may not be a problem at all.
Then apparently the city drug their feet on it once they discovered it was on their own property.

I think the city should have been given 10 days to remove the trees, then paid the woman $1000 a day for every day they stood beyond their own 10 day deadline.

One regularly hears about California wildfires wiping out whole communities, so there is some reason to the madness, even if the governemnt goes a bit overboard with their demands.

===============

Anyway, perhaps another option would be to downgrade. Perhaps get something like a D2, Oliver OC-4, or Case 310, TerraTrack, JD 40C, or similar dozer. It sounds like it is pretty steep, so a ROPS equipped small dozer might be good.

 

[jerrybob]

The Dozer is in Oakland California...

There is a double standard depending if the land is city owned or private.

It happens all the time...

Not to get too far off...

I helped a 99 year old widow I know... she has been in her home for 60 years and has only one daughter that lives 3 hours away...

The city sent her a certified notice to immediately remove hazardous trees stating the city would do it and lien the property after 10 days... ever notice how these things always arrive on a Friday afternoon?

Anyway, I called in a friend that does a lot of survey work... he also likes my Dozer.

The surveyor came with maps and called the city from the site and spoke the city surveyor and said the trees in question are on city land...

The fire department was most unhappy about it and the neighbors that reported it was a former fireman and he kept pressing and eventually the city came and removed the trees...

It must be a strategy to intimidate that works because how can the city send out legal notices and be wrong so often?

The lady who hopes to 100 this year is as sharp as can be mentally and still lives alone... just can't get over how they can send out legal notices without repercussion when it is 100% wrong...

Maybe I'm getting too old because I can remember when things were much simpler...

Sorry to hear the dozer in in Calif. and all the government BS. Hard and expensive state.....at all levels...to deal with. One of the reasons I left years ago. Good luck!:2cents:

 

[ultrarunner]

Sorry to hear the dozer in in Calif. and all the government BS. Hard and expensive state.....at all levels...to deal with. One of the reasons I left years ago. Good luck!:2cents:

I've given a lot of thought making a permanent move to Washington... although a lot of the new rules seem to follow CA... just get implemented a little later.

It seems, unlike cars that are grandfathered... the new Diesel Emission rules leave little wiggle room.

 

[CliffordK]

Sorry to hear the dozer in in Calif. and all the government BS. Hard and expensive state.....at all levels...to deal with. One of the reasons I left years ago. Good luck!:2cents:

I've given a lot of thought making a permanent move to Washington... although a lot of the new rules seem to follow CA... just get implemented a little later.

It seems, unlike cars that are grandfathered... the new Diesel Emission rules leave little wiggle room.

With cars, often the older the car gets, the fewer miles it gets driven. And, of course, there are collectors that would scream if you took away their "classic". Then, of course, those people that drive a junker that is just as old as the classics because that is all they can, or want to afford.

Personally I think the SMOG testing is overrated. I believe that one could graph the number of miles being driven by all cars of each year, and after about 5 years, the total number of miles by each age of car drops off quickly. I.E. the 20+ year cars don't contribute that much to the overall smog, due to both fewer cars and fewer miles driven, especially in "Salt States". St. Louis actually stopped testing pre-ODBII cars.

As far as heavy equipment.
Poking around a 5 acre lot a few times a year doesn't create much smog.
But, some businesses run their dozers & trucks 24 hours a day.

And, of course, seeing Black Smoke is unpopular.

It does make sense to start moving the heavy iron away from the big businesses to lower use.

What about startup businesses? Or, perhaps a home construction business that keeps a dozer around for building one or two houses a year?

The sensible thing might be to verify the hour meter works, and limit the hours of use for certain types of heavy equipment.

I'm surprised that there aren't companies that can come in and and take a $100K dozer and rebuild & recertify it, and get it back into the field. But, at this point, it may be more economical to just ship it a few hundred miles North, South, or East. Or put it on a boat and send it off somewhere else.

 

[ultrarunner]

With cars, often the older the car gets, the fewer miles it gets driven. And, of course, there are collectors that would scream if you took away their "classic". Then, of course, those people that drive a junker that is just as old as the classics because that is all they can, or want to afford.

Personally I think the SMOG testing is overrated. I believe that one could graph the number of miles being driven by all cars of each year, and after about 5 years, the total number of miles by each age of car drops off quickly. I.E. the 20+ year cars don't contribute that much to the overall smog, due to both fewer cars and fewer miles driven, especially in "Salt States". St. Louis actually stopped testing pre-ODBII cars.

As far as heavy equipment.
Poking around a 5 acre lot a few times a year doesn't create much smog.
But, some businesses run their dozers & trucks 24 hours a day.

And, of course, seeing Black Smoke is unpopular.

It does make sense to start moving the heavy iron away from the big businesses to lower use.

What about startup businesses? Or, perhaps a home construction business that keeps a dozer around for building one or two houses a year?

The sensible thing might be to verify the hour meter works, and limit the hours of use for certain types of heavy equipment.

I'm surprised that there aren't companies that can come in and and take a $100K dozer and rebuild & recertify it, and get it back into the field. But, at this point, it may be more economical to just ship it a few hundred miles North, South, or East. Or put it on a boat and send it off somewhere else.

I was at Peterson CAT this morning and they have literature on the counter regarding compliance.. apparently, there are programs and assistance some might qualify for.

Today, at lunch, my friend was pleased to tell me he was able to get a farm exemption for his F600 dump truck... he is very limited... but still pleased not to have to junk it.

In California, 1976 and newer for Smog testing... It had been a rolling exemption and then they made it fixed.

 

[MHarryE]

Cat does make packages to convert the more expensive machinery, like a D11 for instance, to meet CARB requirements. A D3 is not worth it because by the time you install a new engine in an old machine, you have more than machine value. How does CA work? I was familiar with Japan. Once an emission level came into being, a customer had x years to be in compliance, like one year, if the machine was used on MOC or MOT job sites. Those acronyms are Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Transportation. That meant all the used machinery headed for third world countries while the contractors quickly renewed their fleets which meant they had to buy a lot of new equipment in a very short time. In my case the dealer got stuck with a lot of new machines of one model because a project was delayed due to an earthquake so I had to have my guys quickly put together a package to re-engine all of his inventory from Tier I to Tier II. Fortunately that wasn't the major change of going from Tier II to Tier III so it was economical to do and he dealer got credit for donating the old engines to trade schools or training.

A possible fly in the ointment coming up is China's pollution. Their new leader has promised to act. They need to respond to things like the factory burning for 3 days before anyone noticed because the smoke from the fire was just thought to be normal pollution. They could could just say that effective tomorrow all engines must meet USA Tier IV interim or Euro stage 3b and immediately everyone must respond. Things like that have happened before. The US does not have a monopoly on bureaucracy. In fact the US can get a bit lenient in selling credits, allowing non-compliance by paying fines, and allowing companies to continue selling dirty engines if they sell some with super clean engines. Me - I wish my 2 year old CUT didn't set off the smoke detector in my heated garage. The cars and truck don't.

 

[crazyal]

This is why our country is falling apart. Those who either are not affected by the city or think it's a good idea stay while the others move away. Soon areas like this are no longer diversified. That creates pockets across the country that do not see eye to eye. I personally couldn't live there. I don't need someone telling me that a 100 year old tree is a fire hazard that needs to be removed. I don't need someone saying that the vegetation is bad and needs to be cut to prevent fires while another agency is saying leave the vegetation to prevent erosion damage. I could live in a place that would try to tell me what color to paint my house. What's real bad is some of these places will let people build houses in places that should never get a house but you can't leave a century old tree.

 

[3v0]

Agreed crazyal.

Some people have figured this out and are moving back to the small towns their parents or grandparents lived in. To make this work you either have to retire or have work that can be done regardless of location.

I moved 250 miles from a metro area of about a million to a rural town of about 1.5K people. The difference is personal freedoms is tremendous. There are down sides like having to drive hours to go shopping but then the UPS and FEDEX guys drop most of what I can not get locally at my door.

Food is slightly higher but property values, taxes and insurance costs more then make up for it. Do not miss the traffic.

 

[ultrarunner]

I may be naive...

That said, even in my short lifetime the regulatory burden has increased exponentially as to what a person can and cannot do...

It does seem to be better for those outside city limits.

Some of the nonsense gets extreme.

I was spreading a yard of dirt from my box trailer on property owned by my parents... within minutes a police officers arrived, copied my information and then told me they had a report of illegal dumping... this is on property adjacent to our family home of 50 years...

We get along with all our neighbors... it is just people come and go and the back gate to the property is on a short street with 40+ homes on 5,000 square foot city lots.

It's no lie the police were called when my then 65 year old mom had a wheelbarrow, a pick and shovel on her own property taking out a stump... the officer didn't believe Mom was the owner and a second police car arrived... just then a neighbor on that street came home and asked mom what was going on...

Simply the neighbor recognizing Mom resolved the situation.

All I can say it never used to be this way...

 

[crazyal]

Two years ago the town tried to pass a law requiring zoning permits. It got shot down badly. People around here understand once you have to start going to the town and getting a permit to do work on your house then it'll just be a matter of time before they start telling you what you can or can't do. Right now all we have is a state wide regulation for a permit for septic systems. Even that is less than 10 years old. Before then if you owned more than 10 acres you could do what you wanted.