Traffic is pretty much always a mess there, no? :) A few decades ago I used to figure 50 minutes from Napa to downtown SF, but those days are gone....
In California, all pickups are registered as commercial vehicles unless you "permanently attach" a camper in which case it can be registered as an RV, or under certain circumstances register it as a passenger vehicle and never carry anything in the bed (for example a Top Kick 5th wheel puller can be registered as a passenger vehicle even though its a medium duty truck).
With my 14,000 GVWR pickup, I had been tempted to pull past the "no pickups" sign into the weigh station to see what happened. I half expected then to look annoyed and wave me out of there. But I never did, not really wanting to document the situation one way or another with my name attached. In the end I got the local DMV to change the body type - the branch manager had to take it on and everyone in the branch was pretty clueless as to the problem, issues, and statues involved.
