Most of the stations on channel 6 are running 1000 watts or more. Skip is an atmospheric condition in which your signal can travel thousands of miles and reach a distant station. For the SSB operator, skip is pretty reliable. On any given day an operator should be able to talk out of state to somewhere. I have had or heard many conversations on side band which lasted an hour or more.
Atmospheric skip makes the radio a good source of information on a national scale.
Even a totally stock, out of the box CB has the capability to make contact with other states occasionally. These people are to free communication what the BATF is to firearms. Two-way communication is only legal through strict government guidelines. This licensing process is simply a means of keeping tabs on two-way communication. Nazi Germany was also interested in controlling communication as are all totalitarian regimes.