I am thinking about buying my first truck for our landscaping business. We want to buy a hooklift with a 16' box - CA of about 140". Our debate is whether to buy CDL or NON-CDL for our small company of 5 employees.

The debate is cost of ownership relative to increased payload capacity. A 26,000 gvw NON CDL will just meet our requirements of being able to carry around our 10,000lb machine in a box on a hooklift.

We could go CDL and get a better payload capacity for basically the same size truck but my question is this:- does a larger truck, say a 39,000 GVW, cost much more to run per mile than a 26,000GVW?

Does anyone have any MPG figures for each size of truck?

Thanks for any input.