Interpretation ID: Supreme_intl_reconsidered

Ms. Melissa A. Burt
Foley & Lardner, LLP
Attorneys at Law
3000 K Street, NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20007-5143

Dear Ms. Burt:

This responds to your recent letters on behalf of your client, Supreme International Limited (Supreme), asking us to reconsider our January 12, 2005, letter to you concerning whether your clients Truck Mount Feed Processor ("TMFP") is a motor vehicle. You wrote us on January 28, 2005, and on February 15 and 16, following telephone conferences with my staff. (The February 16 letter corrected the letter sent the previous day.)In our January 12, 2005, letter we concluded that the facts indicated that the TMFP should be considered a motor vehicle for purposes of our regulations. After considering the information you provided in your follow-on letters, we have reconsidered our earlier determination and conclude that the TMFP is not a motor vehicle.

We made the determination in our earlier letter that the TMFP was a motor vehicle based on several factors. We believed that the vehicles on-road use would be more than incidental, as your original letter indicated that some portion of TMFPs in fact traverse public roads when traveling between "the feed barn and the livestock". Your follow-on letters clarified that the TMFP is used "to transport grain or other feed only on a farm from the silo or barn where the farmer stores his grain to the field" and that "[g]rain is delivered to the farmers farm by other means". You also state that the vast majority of TMFPs spend no time on the public roads, and that the on-road use "is, in the vast majority of cases, limited to crossing from one field to another". You further state that when Supreme sells a TMFP to a customer, the TMFP is usually shipped via flatbed truck to the customer.

Another factor that we had weighed from your original letter was that it appeared that the vehicle had all the features of a truck, could be certified (according to your letter) as meeting all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standards, and did not have features that would distinguish the vehicle as not intended for on-road use. You provided information in your follow-on letters that shows that the vehicles are specially designed for their off-road purpose. The vehicles suspension can handle the weight of a mixer unit loaded with feed on rough and muddy terrain. The truck has a lower speed differential of 7.17 than that of on-road vehicles, which slows down the TMFP so that the vehicle can travel at very low speeds (1 to 2 miles per hour) to ensure a proper distribution of feed to the cattle. Further, the vehicles engine must be equipped with a front or rear end power takeoff that can run the mixers machinery in the farmers field.

Last, we considered the information you provided in your original letter that purchasers of the vehicles may request a certificate of title so that the TMFP can be registered and licensed under the motor vehicle laws of their respective States. You explained in your follow-on letters that for every ten TMFPs sold, Supreme will usually receive a request for one or two titles and that half of the requests for titles that Supreme receives comes from financial institutions needing a title for loan purposes. You estimate that probably 95 percent of the vehicles sold are never driven on public roads, even incidentally.

In consideration of the information you have provided in your follow-on letters, we now conclude that the TMFP is not a motor vehicle for purposes of our regulations. We believe that the TMFP is a type of farm equipment that is not manufactured primarily for use on the public streets, roads, and highways. It is thus excluded from the definition of "motor vehicle".

If you have any additional questions, please contact us at (202) 366-2992.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Glassman
Chief Counsel

ref:567
d.3/21/05