Motor carrier classes by state

Mississippi hot shot trucking insurance for light-combination and expedited freight operators

Mississippi’s motor carrier safety statute contains a list of things it does not apply to, and one of them is written for the equipment this work runs on. Vehicles “including pickup trucks” with a rating of 26,000 pounds or less, operating intrastate only, are outside the section altogether — not lightly regulated, not partially covered, but excluded, subject to two conditions and nothing else.

Flatbed dually towing a gooseneck flatbed trailer loaded with logs — Mississippi Hot Shot Trucking Insurance from Truck Guard Insurance

Whatever is constant about light-combination freight everywhere — the hours-long window, the deck re-chained for each load, the shipment worth more than the truck beneath it — is treated at hot shot trucking insurance and is not rehearsed on this page.

What Mississippi contributes is an affirmative release, and the drafting is unusually direct about it. Miss. Code § 77-7-16(3) opens “This section shall not apply to the following:” and its seventh item reads: “Motor vehicles, including pickup trucks, that have a GVWR or GCWR of Twenty-six Thousand (26,000) pounds or less, operating intrastate only, provided that such vehicle does not: (i) Transport hazardous material requiring a placard; or (ii) Transport sixteen (16) or more passengers, including the driver.”

Three words in that sentence make it worth a page. “Including pickup trucks” names the power unit class on the face of a state exclusion, which no other instrument read for this project does. “Shall not apply” is a release from the section rather than a lighter version of it. And the two provisos are the entire list of ways to lose it — there is no operating-history condition, no registration condition, no commodity condition beyond placardable hazardous material.

The page also has to be honest about what Mississippi does not publish, because that turns out to be the state’s other defining feature. Its operative motor carrier requirements are incorporated by reference into a book of commission minutes that is not printed in the administrative code, and no dollar figure for this class is obtainable from published law. Where that bites, this page says so and declines to supply a number rather than inferring one.

Unplacarded freight, intrastate only, on a combination at or under 26,000 pounds? Mississippi’s safety section does not reach that operation at all — and the coverage decisions therefore sit with your contracts rather than with a state schedule you can point at.

Give us the rating on the power unit, the rating on the heaviest deck you pull, how often a dispatch crosses into Louisiana, Alabama or Tennessee, and what your most valuable load is worth. Here, the last answer has nothing underneath it.

Start a Mississippi quote

The statute lets go of the vehicle, and it names the truck

Mississippi’s adoption of the federal safety text is short and its exclusion list is where the detail lives. Miss. Code § 77-7-16(1) makes supervision and inspection of safe operation a duty of the Mississippi Transportation Commission and the Motor Carrier Division of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol, and directs that the Commission “shall promulgate as its own the rules, regulations, requirements and classifications of the United States Department of Transportation or any successor federal agency thereof charged with the regulation of motor vehicle safety”.

Subsection (3) then removes eleven things from the section, and the seventh is the one written in this weight range. Its opening words are “Motor vehicles, including pickup trucks”. A state legislature naming a pickup truck inside a motor carrier safety exclusion is telling you what equipment it had in mind, and the equipment it had in mind is the power unit this class runs.

The release is from the section, not from a subsection of it. Because § 77-7-16 is the instrument that both promulgates the federal rules as Mississippi’s own and confers the inspection authority, a vehicle inside paragraph (3)(g) is outside the promulgation and outside the inspection authority conferred by the same section. That is a different and larger thing than being under a threshold in a rule that still applies to you in other respects.

The two provisos are the whole of the conditions and both are about the load rather than the operation. The vehicle must not transport hazardous material requiring a placard, and must not transport sixteen or more passengers including the driver. Neither is a condition a general-freight operator trips accidentally, and neither is a condition about equipment, ownership, authority or history.

The third condition sits in the opening line rather than in the provisos: “operating intrastate only”. That is the one that moves, and it moves per dispatch rather than per truck. Mississippi is a state whose freight lanes run toward Memphis, Mobile, New Orleans and Birmingham, so a carrier operating out of DeSoto, Hancock or Lowndes County is often one load away from a different regulatory posture — and the release is written as a property of the operation, not as a status the carrier holds.

It is worth being exact about what the release does not touch. It is a release from a Mississippi statute. It is not a release from anything federal, and it does not travel with the truck across a state line. What Mississippi has done is decline to extend its own supervision inward to this class, which is a decision about state authority rather than a statement about the work.

  • The vehicle is at or under 26,000 pounds of gross vehicle weight rating or gross combination weight rating.
  • The operation is intrastate only — the condition that changes load by load.
  • The load is not hazardous material requiring a placard.
  • The vehicle does not carry sixteen or more passengers including the driver.
  • All four hold together, and the consequence is exclusion from § 77-7-16 rather than a lighter version of it.

A whole exclusion is not the same as a partial one, and the section shows both

Mississippi drafted both kinds of relief into the same subsection, which makes the difference between them easy to demonstrate rather than assert.

Paragraph (3)(g), quoted above, is unqualified as to subject matter. It removes the vehicle from the section, full stop, subject only to the placarding and passenger provisos.

Paragraph (3)(k) is drafted the other way and says so in its first words: “As to hours of service only, utility service vehicles owned or operated by public utilities subject to regulation by the commission, while in intrastate commerce within this state, with a manufacturer’s gross vehicle rating of less than twenty-six thousand one (26,001) pounds, unless the vehicle: (i) Transports hazardous materials requiring a placard; or (ii) Is designed or used to transport sixteen (16) or more people, including the driver.”

Same weight band, same two provisos, and an express limitation to hours of service. When Mississippi wanted to release one subject and keep the rest, it said which subject. When it wanted to release the vehicle entirely, it said nothing about subject matter at all. The contrast is inside one subsection, which is the strongest evidence available that the broader reading of (3)(g) is the intended one.

For an operator this matters in a practical, checkable way. It means the correct answer to “what does Mississippi require of an unplacarded intrastate combination under the line” is not a shorter list of requirements. It is that the state’s safety section does not reach it, and the requirements that remain come from somewhere else — the federal side when the operation crosses a state line, and the contract side always.

How the section reaches, when it reaches

Reading the affirmative side alongside the exclusion confirms rather than complicates it, and it explains why the intrastate condition is the one that carries the weight.

Miss. Code § 77-7-16(2) confers inspection authority over three groups. Paragraph (a) reaches “Each holder of a certificate of convenience and necessity, a permit to operate as a contract carrier or interstate permit”. Paragraph (b) reaches “Any individual, corporation or partnership engaged in a commercial enterprise operating (i) a single motor vehicle or those in combination with a manufacturer’s gross vehicle rating of more than ten thousand (10,000) pounds, and (ii) a single motor vehicle or those in combination with a manufacturer’s gross vehicle rating of more than twenty-six thousand (26,000) pounds in intrastate commerce”. Paragraph (c) reaches any operator of “a motor vehicle of any gross weight transporting hazardous material that requires placarding”.

The two limbs of paragraph (b) are not a contradiction and they are not a two-tier scheme within intrastate commerce. Limb (ii) carries the words “in intrastate commerce” expressly; limb (i) does not, and it sits at a lower figure. Read together with the (3)(g) exclusion, the structure is coherent: intrastate operation is addressed at the higher figure, and the exclusion then confirms it from the other direction.

Paragraph (c) is the reason the placarding proviso in the exclusion exists. Hazardous material requiring placarding brings a vehicle of any weight inside the section, so the exclusion has to carve it back out or the two provisions would collide.

So the shape of Mississippi’s safety regime, stated as an operator would use it: unplacarded, intrastate, at or under the line, outside the section. Placarded at any weight, inside. Holding a certificate or a permit, inside regardless. And crossing a state line takes the operation out of the release entirely for that load.

Send the power unit and heaviest trailer ratings, the share of dispatches that stay inside Mississippi, and what your heaviest actual load is worth. Where a state publishes no schedule, those three answers are the file.

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Eleven things the section does not reach

The exclusion list was read in full for this page rather than sampled, because a claim about what a list contains is only worth what its denominator is worth. Section 77-7-16(3) has eleven lettered items, (a) through (k), and all eleven were read.

In order: school children and teachers; vehicles owned and operated by governments and their subdivisions; occasional transportation of personal property without compensation and not in furtherance of a commercial enterprise; transportation of human corpses or sick or injured persons; emergency and related operations; private transportation of passengers; the weight-based exclusion quoted above; farmer-owned and operated vehicles meeting three stated conditions; logs and pulpwood between harvest and first processing; vehicles hauling gravel, soil or other unmanufactured road building materials exclusively; and the hours-only utility exclusion.

Two of them are worth a second look for what they show about the state’s drafting habits. The farm item at (3)(h) requires that the farmer be transporting agricultural products from, or machinery and supplies to, a farm the farmer owns; that the vehicle not carry placardable hazardous materials; and that it be used “within one hundred fifty (150) air miles of the farmer’s farm, and the vehicle is a private motor carrier of property.” That is the only radius figure anywhere in the section, and it belongs to a private farm exclusion rather than to any hours-of-service provision for a for-hire carrier.

The road-building item at (3)(j) removes vehicles “engaged exclusively in hauling gravel, soil or other unmanufactured road building materials”. Mississippi thinks about commodity classes when it draws lines, which is worth knowing for an operator whose deck sometimes carries aggregate and sometimes carries machine parts, since the exclusion turns on the word “exclusively”.

The penalty tail sits at § 77-7-16(4): anyone who violates or fails to comply with the section is subject to the penalties provided in another section of the same chapter. That is what an operator is being released from by paragraph (3)(g) — the section and its enforcement, together.

Restricted motor carrier: the class Mississippi made by shrinking two others

Mississippi’s economic regulation of carriers deregulated general freight by narrowing definitions rather than by writing an exemption, and the current definitions were read this year rather than inferred from an old summary.

Miss. Code § 77-7-7, brought forward unchanged in a 2026 bill and therefore reproduced at current vintage, defines the two regulated classes narrowly. Paragraph (e): “The term ‘common carrier by motor vehicle’ means any person who or which undertakes, whether directly or by a lease or any other arrangement, to transport passengers or household goods.” Paragraph (f) defines the contract carrier in the same terms — “transports passengers or household goods.”

Then paragraph (g) creates the residual class and makes its boundaries explicit: “The term ‘restricted motor carrier’ means all carriers of property, except household goods, by motor vehicle for compensation.” A hot shot hauling general freight for money inside Mississippi is a restricted motor carrier, and the entire content of that status is what the chapter attaches to it.

The certificate requirement attaches to the other class. Section 77-7-41 provides that “No common carrier by motor vehicle not exempted in this chapter shall engage in intrastate operation on any highway within the state unless there is in force with respect to such carrier, a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the commission authorizing such operation.” Common carrier — which the definitions confine to passengers and household goods.

The parallel section for restricted carriers imposes no certificate and no permit. Section 77-7-21 requires instead that a restricted motor carrier not engage in intrastate operation unless it is in compliance with the requirements of the laws and regulations of the commission. That is a compliance duty pointed at a body of rules rather than an entry requirement, and the next section explains why that distinction turns out to matter so much in this state.

One point of ordinary caution about the source: the wording of § 77-7-21 above was read from a 2018 bill reproducing it, and the codified text may carry an additional administering body in the same clause following the 2018 transfer of enforcement to the Department of Public Safety. The substance — that no certificate attaches to a restricted motor carrier — is what is being relied on, and that is confirmed independently by the definitions and by the certificate section.

The insurance sections reach the classes you are not in

Mississippi’s motor carrier insurance sections were read this year in their current form, and all three are addressed to holders of something a general-freight carrier does not hold.

Section 77-7-83 reaches “Each holder of a certificate authorizing operation as a common carrier by motor vehicle, or the holder of a contract permit issued by the commission”, requiring an insurance policy, certificate or bond in an amount required by the commission, conditioned to pay a final judgment for personal injuries or property damage suffered by a member of the public or by the state, and provides that the amount “shall in no case be less than the insurance requirements of the United States Department of Transportation as set out in 49 CFR part 387.”

Section 77-7-85 reaches “Each holder of a permit as a contract carrier by motor vehicle issued by the commission”, and it carries a carve-out that is directly relevant to cargo: “However, such carrier shall not be required to file a policy of insurance or bond conditioned to pay the judgments on claims of its passengers, or shippers or patrons.” Even for the carriers this section does reach, shipper claims are outside the filing.

Section 77-7-87 reaches “Each motor carrier holding certificates or permits from and operating under the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in interstate business only” — an agency abolished three decades ago, still named in a section brought forward to the Legislature in 2026 — and carries the same shipper carve-out.

None of the three reaches a restricted motor carrier. So the statutory position for an intrastate general-freight operator is that no Mississippi section requires it to file evidence of liability insurance and none requires it to file evidence of cargo insurance, and the sections that do impose filings expressly exclude shipper claims from what has to be filed even for the classes they cover.

The commercial consequence follows immediately and it is the practical heart of this page. In Mississippi, motor truck cargo is a contractual line with no regulatory floor beneath it. The limit comes from whatever a customer contract demands and whatever the most valuable deck is worth, and there is no state schedule to appeal to when a broker and a carrier disagree about what counts as adequate.

The operative rules are recorded in a book that is not published

This is the finding that makes Mississippi structurally different from every other state in this row, and it is the reason no financial responsibility figure appears anywhere on this page.

Section 77-7-23 contains the delegation: the commission “shall promulgate rules, regulations and procedures for the regulation of minimum amounts of financial responsibility relating to insurance requirements and self-insurance authorization, safety of operations and appointment of agents of service of process for restricted motor carriers.” So the power to set an amount for this class exists, and it is pointed at exactly this class by name.

The published implementing rule then points off the code entirely. 37 Miss. Code R. § 1-6601-04001-102 provides that the Department of Transportation Office of Enforcement is authorized to enforce the federal motor carrier safety regulations at named parts “as amended; and All other Rules and Regulations adopted by the MPSC pursuant to said Mississippi Motor Carrier Regulatory Act of 1938 by Transportation Commission Order”, and closes: “Rules adopted by the Mississippi Transportation Commission are recorded in Minute Book 10 Page 407 of the Official Minutes of the Mississippi Transportation Commission as amended.”

Minute Book 10 Page 407 is not printed in the Mississippi Administrative Code and could not be obtained from any host. That is not a research shortcut; the whole of the administrative chapter was read to establish it. The chapter index for Commercial Motor Vehicle Compliance lists exactly one subchapter, “Purpose”, running from section -100 to section -103, and all four sections were read. Section -100 states the chapter’s purpose. Section -101 says the rule cites the statutory authority. Section -102 is the paragraph quoted above. Section -103, in its entirety, gives two web addresses where the Mississippi Code and the federal regulations may be found — and one of those two host names did not resolve when checked on August 31, 2026.

Four sections, four of four read, none of them containing an amount, a form, a filing address or a schedule. The published administrative rule for commercial motor vehicle compliance in Mississippi is a pointer, and what it points at is not published.

This page therefore publishes no Mississippi financial responsibility figure and no Mississippi cargo figure. Not because the research stopped, but because supplying one would mean inferring a live state obligation from a document nobody can read, and a reader would have no way to tell the inference from a reading. What is established is the shape: the delegation exists, the statutory sections that carry an amount reach other classes, and the rules that would answer the question for this class sit in a commission minute book.

It also means something specific for a carrier already operating. The absence of a Mississippi filing in the state’s records is not evidence of non-compliance and it is not evidence of compliance either. It is the expected condition of a class the published law does not require to file.

The Legislature described the gap in 2026 and then did not close it

The strongest evidence that the gap above is real rather than a failure of research is that Mississippi’s own Legislature described it in its own words this year, in a bill written to fix it.

House Bill 1273 of the 2026 Regular Session would have created a new section of the chapter. Its operative sentence begins: “Each owner or operator of a motor vehicle having a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) or gross combination weight rating (GCWR) of more than ten thousand (10,000) pounds which is operated upon the public highways of this state for the transportation of property, and which is not otherwise required to file proof of financial responsibility under this chapter, shall keep on file with the commission an insurance policy or a certificate of insurance in lieu thereof”.

The clause that matters is “and which is not otherwise required to file proof of financial responsibility under this chapter”. That is a legislative drafter’s description of a class of property vehicles operating on Mississippi highways today with no filing duty — which is the same class this page is written for, described from the inside.

The bill’s own title says the same thing in plainer language: an act to establish minimum insurance requirements for certain large motor vehicles “WHICH ARE OTHERWISE NOT SUBJECT TO THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR CERTAIN COMMON CARRIERS, CONTRACT CARRIERS AND INTERSTATE CARRIERS”. The three classes named are precisely the three that §§ 77-7-83, 77-7-85 and 77-7-87 reach, which is why the bill also brought those three sections forward for possible amendment.

It did not pass. The Legislature’s own status record for HB 1273 shows two actions: “01/19 (H) Referred To Insurance” and “02/03 (H) Died In Committee”, with the bill marked Dead. It would have taken effect July 1, 2026 had it been enacted.

So the position as of August 31, 2026 is that the gap the bill described persists, and that it was described by the body with the power to close it. One drafting detail is worth carrying, because a reader could take the wrong lesson from a dead bill: the proposed section spoke of a duty to keep proof on file, not a duty to carry coverage. Nothing in it suggests that a Mississippi carrier without a filing obligation is a Mississippi carrier without an insurable exposure.

Pricing a state that publishes almost nothing

No schedule prices this class, and a figure produced from a page would be fabricated. What follows is the reading order for a Mississippi submission, and it is an unusual order because so little here is fixed by the state.

Cargo value is first, and it is first by a distance. No Mississippi section requires a restricted motor carrier to file cargo insurance, the sections that reach other classes expressly exclude shipper claims from what must be filed, and no published rule sets an amount. That leaves a customer contract on one side and, on the other, whatever the operation’s most valuable deck happens to be worth. In a class where one deck can hold machine components, or replacement parts bought at a premium because a production line has gone down, a limit set against a typical load fails against precisely the load that produces a claim.

The state line is second, and in Mississippi it is a live question on more loads than the map suggests. The (3)(g) release is conditioned on operating intrastate only, and the state’s freight corridors run toward Memphis, Mobile, New Orleans and Birmingham. Whether a given dispatch crosses is a property of the load rather than of the carrier, which makes the truthful answer a range of outcomes and not an intention.

The combination rating is third, and here it decides whether the release applies at all. The statutory line runs on the greater of the vehicle and combination ratings, so the trailer hooked up on the day is what settles it. A rating describes a design and not a load, and nobody manufactures a combination — the owner puts one together — so the answer can move the week a heavier deck is bought, with nothing at all to mark the crossing.

Commodity is fourth and it works in two directions. Placardable hazardous material takes the operation out of the release at any weight under the section’s own paragraph (2)(c). And at the other end, the state’s road-building exclusion turns on the word “exclusively”, so a deck that mixes aggregate with general freight is not in that class either.

Underneath all of it sits the paper, and in a state that files nothing for this class it carries far more than it would elsewhere. Leasing on instead of holding one’s own authority decides who answers first after a loss. A broker or shipper demanding insured status decides how much of the tower responds. Wording that puts one policy ahead of every other without contribution decides the order they respond in, and a recovery right signed away at onboarding decides whether anything is ever recovered afterward. Those four documents are the only floor Mississippi leaves standing. The sequence is set out on the general freight and new authority setup pages, and trucking auto liability covers the line contracts name first.

  • Cargo value on the heaviest load actually carried, given that no Mississippi cargo filing reaches a restricted motor carrier.
  • Whether dispatches stay intrastate, expressed as a distribution rather than an intention.
  • The rating the trailer in service produces, since the statutory line runs on whichever rating is greater.
  • Whether any load is placardable hazardous material, which removes the release at any weight.
  • Authority type — own authority or leased on — and what the shipper agreement requires.
  • Additional-insured, primary-and-non-contributory and waiver-of-subrogation terms, which in this state are the only floor there is.

What could not be established, and what that means for this page

Mississippi is the least fully documented state in this row, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of effort. Saying which questions are open is more useful than filling the space with material that would apply anywhere.

Three things could not be established at primary source. Mississippi’s intrastate financial responsibility amount for a restricted motor carrier: the delegation exists at § 77-7-23, the implementing rule points at an unpublished commission minute book, and no figure is published here for that reason. Any Mississippi variation to the adopted hours-of-service rules: the published administrative chapter adopts a range of federal parts that contains the hours part without stating a modification, but the same rule routes the reader to the unpublished minutes, so a variation recorded there cannot be excluded. And any Mississippi air-mile provision: the same reasoning applies, and the only radius figure anywhere in § 77-7-16 belongs to the private farm exclusion rather than to a for-hire hours rule.

Each of those is recorded as unestablished rather than as absent. There is a real difference between “Mississippi has no such rule” and “no such rule is published where the public can read it”, and only the second is supportable here.

What is established stands on its own. The statutory release at § 77-7-16(3)(g) was read verbatim, appears without strike or insert marks in a bill reproducing then-current law, and is corroborated by the affirmative inspection-authority limbs in the same section. The narrowed carrier definitions and the three insurance sections were read at 2026 vintage in a bill that brought them forward unchanged. The administrative chapter was read at full scope, four sections of four. The dead 2026 bill and its committee history were read on the Legislature’s own status server.

One source limitation is worth stating so a later reader can weigh it. No freely accessible host carrying the enrolled Mississippi Code was found on the date of this research; the aggregator hosts that reproduce it returned a bot challenge rather than text, and the Secretary of State’s own site returned an access denial. Statutory text was therefore read from the Legislature’s own bill-status server, which reproduces sections in full and whose documents carry their own session and bill identification.

Finally, the absence that is not a research limitation at all: Mississippi does not name this work. It supplies no term for it, no class, no schedule of amounts and no required endorsement. The one place a Mississippi instrument names the equipment — “including pickup trucks” — is inside an exclusion, and an exclusion that names your truck is still a state declining to regulate you rather than a state writing a rule for you.

Coverage lines a Mississippi hot shot account usually carries

The state minimum is a licensing threshold. The program an operator actually needs is built from these lines:

  • Trucking Auto Liability — Primary liability coverage for bodily injury and property damage caused by your truck while under dispatch.
  • Physical Damage — Collision and comprehensive coverage for the tractor, trailer, and attached equipment you own or finance.
  • Motor Truck Cargo — Coverage for the freight you haul against loss or damage in transit.
  • Trailer Interchange — Coverage for non-owned trailers you pull under written interchange agreements.
  • General Liability — Coverage for premises and operations liability away from the truck — terminal yards, customer docks, and non-driving exposures.
  • Workers Compensation — Statutory coverage for driver and yard-employee injury, structured for trucking payrolls and interstate operations.
  • Non-Trucking (Bobtail) Auto Liability — Liability coverage for the tractor when operated off-dispatch — bobtailing home or running personal errands.
  • Pollution Liability — Coverage for cargo-related pollution events and upset/overturn spills not covered by standard auto liability.

Why Truck Guard Insurance for a Mississippi hot shot account

We write hot shot and expedited hauling as a named class rather than as an exception to general trucking, and we read each account against the weight and authority regime of the state it operates in. For a Mississippi operator that means starting from the rating of the power unit and the trailer separately rather than from the combination, sizing cargo against the heaviest load actually carried rather than the average one, and treating the state line as a rating fact because a single crossing can change which driver file the operation owes.

If the operation also runs freight under separate authority, the Mississippi trucking insurance page covers the state’s broader motor carrier picture, and the hot shot trucking insurance page covers the class mechanics that apply wherever the operator runs.

Mississippi hot shot trucking insurance questions

Is an intrastate hot shot under 26,000 pounds outside Mississippi’s motor carrier safety statute?

Yes, subject to two provisos. Miss. Code § 77-7-16(3) opens “This section shall not apply to the following:” and its paragraph (g) covers “Motor vehicles, including pickup trucks, that have a GVWR or GCWR of Twenty-six Thousand (26,000) pounds or less, operating intrastate only, provided that such vehicle does not: (i) Transport hazardous material requiring a placard; or (ii) Transport sixteen (16) or more passengers, including the driver.” It is an exclusion from the section rather than a lighter version of it. Read August 31, 2026.

How is that different from the utility exclusion in the same list?

By subject matter, and Mississippi says so in the first words of each. Paragraph (3)(k) begins “As to hours of service only” before describing utility service vehicles in the same weight band with the same two provisos. Paragraph (3)(g) contains no subject-matter limitation at all. When Mississippi wanted to release one subject and keep the rest, it named the subject; when it wanted to release the vehicle from the section, it said nothing about subject matter. Both sit in the same subsection.

Does Mississippi require intrastate operating authority for general freight?

No. Miss. Code § 77-7-7(g) defines “restricted motor carrier” as “all carriers of property, except household goods, by motor vehicle for compensation”, and §§ 77-7-7(e) and (f) confine the common carrier and contract carrier classes to “passengers or household goods”. The certificate requirement at § 77-7-41 attaches to common carriers only. Mississippi deregulated general freight by narrowing the definitions rather than by writing an exemption. Definitions read at 2026 vintage from a bill bringing them forward unchanged.

What are Mississippi’s minimum insurance amounts for a restricted motor carrier?

No dollar figure for this class is obtainable from published Mississippi law, and none is published here. The delegation exists — § 77-7-23 directs the commission to promulgate rules for minimum amounts of financial responsibility for restricted motor carriers — but the only published implementing rule, 37 Miss. Code R. § 1-6601-04001-102, states that the Commission’s rules “are recorded in Minute Book 10 Page 407 of the Official Minutes of the Mississippi Transportation Commission as amended”, which is not printed in the administrative code and could not be obtained.

Does Mississippi require a cargo insurance filing?

Not from a restricted motor carrier, on the published statutes. Sections 77-7-83, 77-7-85 and 77-7-87 reach certificate holders, contract permit holders and interstate permit holders respectively, and § 77-7-85 adds that even for the carriers it does reach, “such carrier shall not be required to file a policy of insurance or bond conditioned to pay the judgments on claims of its passengers, or shippers or patrons.” Because the commission’s own rules sit in an unpublished minute book, a requirement recorded there cannot be excluded.

Did Mississippi try to close this gap recently?

Yes, and the attempt failed. House Bill 1273 of the 2026 Regular Session proposed a filing duty for property vehicles over a stated rating “which is not otherwise required to file proof of financial responsibility under this chapter”, and brought §§ 77-7-7, 77-7-83, 77-7-85 and 77-7-87 forward for possible amendment. The Legislature’s status record shows “01/19 (H) Referred To Insurance” and “02/03 (H) Died In Committee”, with the bill marked Dead. It would have taken effect July 1, 2026.

Which edition of the federal safety text does Mississippi adopt?

None is stated. Miss. Code § 77-7-16(1) directs the Transportation Commission to promulgate as its own “the rules, regulations, requirements and classifications of the United States Department of Transportation or any successor federal agency thereof charged with the regulation of motor vehicle safety” — an open-ended, agency-following adoption with no CFR edition, no part list and no revision date. The administrative rule adopts a named range of federal parts “as amended”, which is likewise undated.

Does Mississippi change the hours-of-service rules or the short-haul radius?

Not established, and this page will not assert it either way. The published administrative rule adopts a range of federal parts that includes the hours part without stating a modification, but the same rule routes the reader to the unpublished Transportation Commission minutes, so a variation recorded there cannot be excluded. The only radius figure in § 77-7-16 is the 150 air-mile limit inside the farm exclusion at paragraph (3)(h), which applies to a farmer’s private motor carriage rather than to for-hire freight.

How much does hot shot insurance cost in Mississippi?

There is nothing to look this up in, and a figure produced from a page would be fabricated. Price turns on the worth of the most valuable load carried, since no Mississippi cargo filing reaches this class; the share of dispatches that stay inside the state, since the statutory release depends on it; the rating the trailer in service produces; whether any load is placardable; whose authority the trucks run under; how long the drivers have been driving; and the insurance conditions written into shipper agreements, which here have nothing beneath them.

Sources

Every figure on this page was read at the source below on August 31, 2026, with the effective date of the version read. Treat each as current as of that date rather than as permanent.

  • Miss. Code § 77-7-16 — Safety of operation and equipment (read from Mississippi HB 119, 2018 Regular Session, As Introduced) — Read August 31, 2026 from the Mississippi Legislature’s own bill-status server, which reproduces code sections in full with proposed strikes and inserts marked. Subsections (1) through (4) were read end to end. The (3)(g) exclusion — “Motor vehicles, including pickup trucks, that have a GVWR or GCWR of Twenty-six Thousand (26,000) pounds or less, operating intrastate only” with its placarding and passenger provisos — appears in that document without strike or insert marks, i.e. as existing law. Subsection (3) has eleven lettered items, (a) through (k), all read; the hours-only utility item at (3)(k) and the 150 air-mile private farm item at (3)(h) are quoted in the body. Subsection (2)(b) and (2)(c), the affirmative inspection-authority limbs, were read in the same pass. ⚠ Source note: no freely accessible host carrying the enrolled Mississippi Code was found on this date; aggregator hosts returned bot challenges and the Secretary of State’s site returned an access denial. The bill server serves a certificate chain that some clients will reject..
  • Miss. Code §§ 77-7-7, 77-7-83, 77-7-85 and 77-7-87 (read at 2026 vintage from Mississippi HB 1273, 2026 Regular Session, As Introduced) — Read August 31, 2026. HB 1273 brings these four sections forward unchanged, so the bill reproduces their current text. § 77-7-7(e) and (f) confine the common carrier and contract carrier classes to “passengers or household goods”; § 77-7-7(g) defines “restricted motor carrier” as “all carriers of property, except household goods, by motor vehicle for compensation”. §§ 77-7-83, 77-7-85 and 77-7-87 reach certificate holders, contract permit holders and interstate permit holders, with § 77-7-85 and § 77-7-87 carrying the shipper-and-patron carve-out quoted in the body, and § 77-7-87 still naming the Interstate Commerce Commission. The bill’s own proposed section describes property vehicles “not otherwise required to file proof of financial responsibility under this chapter.” Bill status record read the same day: referred to Insurance January 19, died in committee February 3, 2026, marked Dead..
  • 37 Miss. Code R. §§ 1-6601-04001-100 through -103 — Commercial Motor Vehicle Compliance (Mississippi Department of Transportation, Office of Enforcement) — Read August 31, 2026 under the title block “Mississippi Administrative Code / Title 37 — Transportation and Highways / Part 1 — Mississippi Department of Transportation / Subpart 6601 — Office of Enforcement / Chapter 04001 — Commercial Motor Vehicle Compliance.” The chapter index was retrieved separately and lists a single subchapter, “Purpose (§ 37-1-6601-04001-100 to 37-1-6601-04001-103)” — four sections, four of four read. Section -102 carries the adoption of named federal parts “as amended” and the closing sentence recording that the Commission’s own rules “are recorded in Minute Book 10 Page 407 of the Official Minutes of the Mississippi Transportation Commission as amended”, which is not published in the administrative code and could not be obtained. Section -103 gives two external web addresses, one of which did not resolve when checked on August 31, 2026. No amount, form, filing address or schedule appears anywhere in the chapter..
  • Mississippi HB 1273 (2026) — bill status and history record — Read August 31, 2026. Short title: “Insurance; establish minimum requirements for certain large motor vehicles not subject to minimums under Motor Carrier Regulatory Law.” Actions recorded: “01/19 (H) Referred To Insurance” and “02/03 (H) Died In Committee”; status Dead; stated effective date July 1, 2026 had it been enacted. Cited here as the Legislature’s own contemporaneous characterization that a class of property vehicles on Mississippi highways currently has no filing duty under the chapter..

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