Motor carrier classes by state
Nebraska is one of a small number of states that writes its own driving-hour numbers into statute rather than adopting somebody else’s. An intrastate driver here runs twelve hours after ten consecutive hours off, and may not drive after sixteen hours on duty. The Legislature also did something rarer still on the insurance side: it wrote a sentence forbidding its own commission to make a general-freight carrier insure the load.
The features of light-combination hauling that repeat in every state — the compressed window, the securement duty across mixed freight, the way one high-value load overruns a limit written for an average one — belong to the class and are set out on the hot shot trucking insurance page rather than repeated here.
Nebraska’s contribution is unusually concrete. Most states adopt a federal safety package and then modify it at the edges. Nebraska adopts a package and then writes numbers over the top of it in the statute itself, and the numbers it writes are the ones that decide how long a driver may work. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-363(9) is a legislative hours rule, not a regulatory variance.
The second Nebraska feature is a prohibition rather than a requirement. Section 75-307(3) tells the Public Service Commission what it may not do: it may not compel a motor carrier other than a household goods mover to carry cargo insurance. That is not an omission an operator could hope to see filled by a future rulemaking; the power was withheld by the Legislature.
Every figure below is attributed to the section that sets it and was re-read on the date shown. Two of the sections relied on here were amended within the last few months of that date, and this page names those effective dates rather than assuming the text has been stable.
Running paid freight inside Nebraska and working to a federal duty clock? The state wrote a different one into statute for intrastate operation, and the difference is measured in hours per day rather than in paperwork.
Send the power unit and trailer ratings separately and tell us how a long day actually runs — dispatch time, load time, the drive. In Nebraska the shape of the day is a statutory question before it is an operational one.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-363(9)(a), verbatim: “Part 395 - HOURS OF SERVICE OF DRIVERS shall apply to motor carriers and drivers who engage in intrastate commerce as defined in section 75-362, except that no motor carrier who engages in intrastate commerce shall permit or require any driver used by it to drive nor shall any driver drive: (i) More than twelve hours following ten consecutive hours off duty; or (ii) For any period after having been on duty sixteen hours following ten consecutive hours off duty.”
That is a Nebraska number, in a Nebraska statute, applying to Nebraska intrastate operation. It is not a regulatory variance that an agency could adjust and it is not an interpretive gloss on adopted text; the Legislature adopted the federal hours part and then wrote over its two governing limits in the same subsection.
The weekly limits are legislative too, and they turn on a fact about the business rather than about the driver. Section 75-363(9)(b) forbids a motor carrier to permit or require a driver of a commercial motor vehicle to drive, and forbids the driver to drive, for any period after “(i) Having been on duty seventy hours in any seven consecutive days if the employing motor carrier does not operate every day of the week; or (ii) Having been on duty eighty hours in any period of eight consecutive days if the employing motor carrier operates motor vehicles every day of the week.”
Read that carefully, because the condition is about the carrier and not about the individual. Which cycle applies depends on whether the employing motor carrier operates every day of the week. A single-truck operation that begins taking Sunday loads has moved itself from one cycle to the other by a business decision, and nothing about the driver has changed.
For a light-combination operation the practical consequence is a longer lawful day inside Nebraska than the same driver would have outside it, and it arrives with the ordinary trap attached: the relief is intrastate. A dispatch that leaves the state is not on the Nebraska clock for that trip, and this class of work is frequently sold on availability rather than planned by lane. The question resolves per load rather than per driver.
There is a hedge on the whole apparatus that should be carried with it. Section 75-363(8) provides: “For purposes of this section, intrastate motor carriers shall not include any motor carrier or driver excepted from 49 C.F.R. chapter III by section 390.3(f) of part 390.” Nebraska’s intrastate scheme is defined by subtraction from a federal exception list, so the boundary of “intrastate motor carrier” in this section is not self-contained.
Nebraska’s safety chapter contains two statements of where its reach begins, and they are written in different words. Both are in the same chapter and both were read this pass.
The applicability sentence is at § 75-363(2)(b)(i). The adopted regulations apply to “all motor carriers transporting persons or property in intrastate commerce to include: (i) All vehicles of such motor carriers with a gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight, or gross combination weight over ten thousand pounds.” The formula is “over ten thousand pounds.”
The chapter’s definitions section states it as a threshold instead. Section 75-362(6) defines a commercial motor vehicle as one used on a highway in interstate or intrastate commerce to transport passengers or property where the vehicle “has a gross vehicle weight rating or gross combination weight rating or gross vehicle weight or gross combination weight of ten thousand one pounds or more, whichever is greater.”
For whole pounds those two formulations describe the same line, and this page does not pretend otherwise. What is worth noticing is that the sentence doing the applying is the one written in Nebraska’s own idiom, and the four measures are alternatives joined by “or” — the reach attaches if any one of rating, combination rating, actual weight or actual combination weight is over the figure.
That “or” is the part that matters for a combination. A power unit whose own rating is comfortably below the line takes the operation over it the moment the combination rating or the loaded combination weight goes over, and a heavier trailer put behind the same truck changes the answer on the day it is coupled. Nothing in the sentence announces the crossing and nothing requires a scale ticket to prove it — a rating is enough.
Section 75-363(1) sets what is being applied and how currently: the listed parts of Title 49, “as modified in this section, or any other parts, subparts, and sections referred to by such parts, subparts, and sections, in existence and effective as of the date specified in section 75-365,” are adopted as Nebraska law. The adopted parts are enumerated at § 75-363(3) and run from the controlled substances and testing part through to the migrant worker part, including the financial responsibility part at (3)(d) and the hours part at (3)(i).
Nebraska does not put an edition date next to each adopted part. It puts one date in one place and makes every other section point at it.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-365(3), verbatim: “For purposes of sections 75-362 to 75-369.07, when a provision of any of such sections refers to the date specified in this section, such date is January 1, 2026.”
That is a clean, centralized freeze, and it is much easier to check than a part-by-part scheme. It is also easier to fall behind on, because the whole chapter moves at once when the Legislature moves that one sentence, and a summary of Nebraska written against a prior year is describing a different body of adopted text in every particular.
The section was amended recently enough to make the point concrete. Its source block records Laws 2025, LB398, § 59 and Laws 2026, LB781, § 9, with an effective date of April 15, 2026. The safety section it serves, § 75-363, carries its own long amendment history running through Laws 2025, LB398, § 57.
Two further provisions in § 75-365 belong on the record because they are easy to miss and both are operational. Subsection (1) provides that definitions contained in the adopted regulations “shall only apply to such regulations” — a scoping rule that keeps federal definitions from leaking into the rest of Nebraska’s chapter. Subsection (2) requires that where the adopted regulations call for a report to a federal agency, the person “shall also submit a copy of the report to the Nebraska State Patrol.” That duplicate-filing duty is a live obligation with no weight condition attached to it.
The practical discipline for anyone quoting Nebraska is therefore short: find the date in § 75-365(3), check it against the current text rather than a summary, and note that a single amendment there re-dates everything else.
Send the ratings of the power unit and heaviest trailer, the honest shape of a long working day, and whether any dispatch leaves the state. Those three answers place a Nebraska operation under the right clock before any coverage question is reached.
Among the thirteen subsections of § 75-363 there is one that removes a federal operating-authority provision from intrastate operation entirely, and it does so by naming it.
Section 75-363(12), verbatim: “49 C.F.R. 392.9a - Operating authority shall not apply to Nebraska motor carriers operating commercial motor vehicles solely in intrastate commerce.”
The word doing the work is “solely.” An operation that runs only inside Nebraska is outside that provision. An operation that runs inside Nebraska and also, sometimes, outside it, is not operating solely in intrastate commerce and cannot rely on the subsection for the trips that leave.
This sits alongside the general applicability hedge at § 75-363(8) and the several class exclusions in the same section, and together they show the drafting habit of the chapter: Nebraska legislates on the federal text by naming specific sections and switching them on or off, rather than by writing general standards. That habit makes the chapter unusually readable and unusually easy to get wrong by quoting one subsection without the others.
The other named exclusions in the section are worth knowing even where they do not reach this work, because they mark the boundaries. Farm trucks registered under the state’s farm registration provision with a gross weight of sixteen tons or less are outside the adopted parts, with three further named provisions disapplied to their drivers when operated solely intrastate. Covered farm vehicles are outside four named parts. Fertilizer and agricultural chemical application equipment in units of three thousand five hundred gallons or less is outside two. The vehicle-marking provision does not reach farm trucks and farm truck-tractors registered under the same provision and operated solely intrastate.
None of those reaches a for-hire light combination carrying general property, and the reason is consistent across all of them: every exclusion in the section is drawn on agricultural character or on a named vehicle class, and not one is drawn on a weight that a hot shot could fall under.
The question of whether Nebraska requires intrastate operating authority for general freight is answered in the definitions section of the article that would grant it, and the answer is legible only if all four defined instruments are read together.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-302(3) defines “certificate” as “a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued under Chapter 75, article 3, to common carriers by motor vehicle.” Section 75-302(16) defines “permit” as “a permit issued under Chapter 75, article 3, to contract carriers by motor vehicle.” Those are the two classic instruments, and each is keyed to a defined carrier class.
Now read the classes. Section 75-302(6): “Common carrier means any person who or which undertakes to transport passengers for the general public in intrastate commerce by motor vehicle for hire.” Section 75-302(7): “Contract carrier means any motor carrier that transports passengers for hire other than as a common carrier designed to meet the distinct needs of each individual customer or a specifically designated class of customers.” Both are passenger definitions. Neither mentions property.
The third instrument is the license, and § 75-302(12) enumerates it exhaustively: a license is issued to a carrier engaged in the for-hire intrastate transportation of household goods under one section, to a carrier transporting employees of an interstate railroad carrier under another, and to a carrier or person providing intrastate medicaid non-emergency medical transportation under a third.
And the term the scope section turns on is defined the same way. Section 75-302(19): “Regulated motor carrier means any person who or which owns, controls, manages, operates, or causes to be operated any motor vehicle used to transport passengers, other than those excepted under section 75-303, over any public highway in this state,” with three named exclusions for the license classes.
Four instruments — certificate, permit, license and the regulated-carrier status that carries them — and every one is a passenger, household-goods, railroad-employee or medicaid instrument. General intrastate freight is in none of them. That is an enumeration rather than an inference: the definitions section was read in full and there is no fifth instrument in it.
One piece of drafting in the scope section should be carried rather than smoothed. Section 75-303 opens: “Sections 75-301 to 75-322 shall apply to transportation by a motor carrier or the transportation of passengers and, until July 1, 2021, household goods, by a regulated motor carrier for hire in intrastate commerce except for the following,” and then lists seventeen exceptions. The sentence is awkwardly assembled and the “until July 1, 2021” clause is a spent date left standing in the text. This page does not attempt to resolve that sentence; it reports the instruments, which are defined unambiguously, and notes that the scope sentence they sit under is not.
The seventeen exceptions confirm the shape rather than complicating it. They are school transportation, streetcar-connected service, agritourism passenger services in vehicles seating eight or more, ambulances and hearses and funeral vehicles, religious and fraternal and educational and charitable carriage, city-operated passenger service, non-profit transport of persons over sixty and the handicapped, transit authorities, household goods, railroad-employee transport, county and municipal elderly transport, small vehicles operated by governmental subdivisions or qualified public-purpose organizations, non-profit electric service vehicles, and four classes of contracted health and social care transportation. Every one is a passenger or household-goods exception. Not one is a weight.
Nebraska’s treatment of cargo is not silence. It is an express statutory prohibition on the agency, and it was re-read in full this pass.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-307(3), verbatim: “In carrying out this section, the commission may classify motor carriers and regulated motor carriers taking into consideration the hazards of the operations of such carriers and the value of the household goods carried. Nothing contained in this section shall be construed to authorize the commission to compel motor carriers other than those transporting household goods under section 75-309 or under a license issued pursuant to section 75-304.03 to carry cargo insurance.”
The distinction between that and an ordinary absence is the whole point. In most states, no cargo filing means no rule has been made; the power exists and has not been used. In Nebraska the Legislature has said the power is not there. A general-freight carrier cannot be compelled by the commission to insure the load, and no future commission rulemaking could change that without the Legislature moving first.
Even for the classes the section does reach, the cargo power is permissive rather than mandatory. Section 75-307(2)(b) provides that the commission “may adopt and promulgate rules and regulations that require the motor carriers described in subdivision (a) of this subsection to file a surety bond, policies of insurance, qualifications as a self-insurer, or other securities or agreements, in a sum to be determined by the commission,” conditioned upon compensating shippers or consignees for property coming into the carrier’s possession. The verb is “may,” and the sum is left to the commission rather than stated in the statute.
The liability side of the section is drawn on the same class boundaries. Section 75-307(1)(a) applies the commission’s filing and maintenance rules to common and contract carriers, household goods carriers under a license, railroad-employee carriers under a license, and medicaid non-emergency medical transportation licensees. Subsection (1)(c) makes compliance a condition both of issue and of continued force: no certificate, permit or license shall be issued to a non-complying member of those classes, and one already issued “shall not remain in force” unless the carrier complies.
Section 75-307(4) adds one further scope line: “This section does not apply to transportation network companies.”
The consequence for an operator in this class is clean and unusual. The freight on the deck is insured because the shipper contract requires it and because losing it would be ruinous, not because Nebraska says so — and Nebraska has gone further than most states in making clear that it will not say so.
The section is current. Its source block runs from Laws 1963 through Laws 2026, LB1126, § 93, with an effective date of July 18, 2026 — an amendment inside the two months before this page was verified, which is precisely the situation in which a secondary summary is most likely to be describing superseded text.
Nebraska writes one air-mile construction of its own, and it is agricultural rather than general.
Section 75-363(10) disapplies the hours part, as adopted in subsections (3) and (9), to drivers transporting agricultural commodities or farm supplies for agricultural purposes during planting and harvesting season in three defined movements: agricultural commodities from the source to a location within a one-hundred-fifty-air-mile radius of the source; farm supplies from a wholesale or retail distribution point to a farm or other location of intended use within a one-hundred-fifty-air-mile radius of that distribution point; and farm supplies from a wholesale distribution point to a retail distribution point within a one-hundred-fifty-air-mile radius of the wholesale point.
What Nebraska does not do here is worth noticing as much as what it does. The subsection is conditioned on “planting and harvesting season” and the statute does not define that season or declare its length. Some states resolve that by an agency finding; Nebraska’s statute leaves the phrase to do its own work in this section, and this page does not supply a length the statute does not state.
Nothing in § 75-363 modifies the short-haul air-mile construction that sits inside the adopted hours part for general freight. Nebraska legislated on the hours numbers, on the agricultural exception and on the named class exclusions, and left the short-haul provision as adopted.
For a light combination hauling ordinary property, therefore, the air-mile question is a federal-text question read through Nebraska’s adoption, and the hours question is a Nebraska-numbers question. Those two are answered by different instruments and there is no reason to expect them to move together.
Nebraska adopts the federal financial-responsibility part at § 75-363(3)(d) and applies it to intrastate carriage by the applicability sentence at § 75-363(2)(b)(i). No Nebraska-specific dollar figure appears in the sections read for this page.
That produces a different structure from the safety questions above. On hours, Nebraska wrote numbers. On minimum limits, Nebraska adopted a schedule and extended it inward to intrastate operation above its own applicability line, without restating any of it.
The consequence is that the limits question for an intrastate Nebraska operation is answered inside adopted text rather than in the Nebraska statute, and the applicability sentence rather than any Nebraska number decides whether the adopted schedule reaches a given vehicle at all. Below the state’s applicability line the adopted part is not being extended to the operation by § 75-363(2)(b)(i), and above it, it is.
The court has spoken about how compliance with that adopted requirement works, and the annotations printed with the statute record three propositions from a single 2020 decision of the Nebraska Supreme Court: that a motor carrier may combine more than one policy, and use more than one method, to meet the minimum financial responsibility requirements; that compliance with those requirements is the responsibility of the motor carrier and not the insurer; and that the section does not regulate the terms and conditions of insurance policies.
Those three sentences are worth more to an operator than a figure would be. They mean the compliance duty sits on the carrier rather than on the paper, that a program may be assembled from more than one instrument, and that the statute is not a source of coverage terms — which is exactly the misunderstanding that produces an unpleasant surprise when a policy responds differently from the way a statutory minimum reads.
There is no rate table for this class and no honest way to produce one from a page. What follows is the material read before a number exists.
The shape of the working day comes first, because Nebraska’s day is a different length from the day the same driver would run outside the state. What an underwriter needs is not a policy statement but the actual pattern: when dispatch typically lands, how long loading takes on the routes actually run, and how often a day approaches sixteen hours on duty. A statutory allowance of twelve driving hours is a fact about what is lawful and not a fact about what is safe, and the gap between those two is priced.
Whether the operation ever leaves the state is second and it is the same question in a different form, because the statutory day, the operating-authority disapplication at § 75-363(12) and the whole intrastate apparatus all stop at the line. An operation that describes itself as intrastate but crosses occasionally is running two regimes and usually only knows about one.
Gross combination weight rating is third. Four alternative measures feed the applicability sentence, and the trailer decides the answer as often as the truck does.
Cargo is fourth and in Nebraska it is entirely a contract question. No filing exists, the commission is forbidden to compel one for general freight, and the limit therefore comes from the shipper agreement and from the value of the heaviest load actually carried. This class carries value out of proportion to its weight, and a limit set against the average load fails against the load that generates the claim.
The duplicate-reporting duty at § 75-365(2) is a small item with a disproportionate effect on how an account looks: an operator who has never sent a copy of a federal report to the state patrol has a compliance gap that costs nothing to close and looks bad if it is found late.
Underneath everything is the contract stack — own authority or somebody else’s, additional-insured and primary-and-non-contributory wording flowing down from shippers, waivers of subrogation given or refused. Those change the program without changing anything about the truck, and in a state that has withdrawn from the cargo question they carry more of the weight than usual.
No Nebraska statute read for this page names this trade. There is no defined term for it, no class of certificate or permit written for it, no separate insurance schedule keyed to it and no weight band drawn around it. The state reaches the work through an applicability sentence written for motor carriage generally and through a for-hire definition with no weight in it.
The negative about operating authority is licensed by an enumeration rather than by a search. The definitions section of the economic-regulation article was read in full, and every instrument it defines — certificate, permit, license — together with the carrier classes those instruments attach to and the “regulated motor carrier” status that carries them, is a passenger, household-goods, railroad-employee or medicaid instrument. There is no fifth instrument and no property class among the four.
The negative about cargo is stronger than an enumeration, because the statute states it. The section that would carry a cargo filing says in terms that nothing in it authorizes the commission to compel cargo insurance from anyone but a household goods mover, and that section was read in full including its source and effective-date block.
What was not read is stated too. The Public Service Commission’s own rules were not obtained, and the sum the commission may set under § 75-307(2)(b) for the classes it does reach is a rule figure rather than a statutory one. No such figure is published here.
The overall shape is a state that legislates precisely and narrowly: real numbers where it wants numbers, named federal sections switched off where it wants them off, and an express refusal to regulate where it has decided not to. Nebraska is easy to read and easy to misquote, and the most common way to misquote it is to describe an omission where the Legislature wrote a prohibition.
The state minimum is a licensing threshold. The program an operator actually needs is built from these lines:
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 Nebraska 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 Nebraska 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.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-363(9)(a) provides that no motor carrier engaging in intrastate commerce shall permit or require a driver to drive, and no driver shall drive, more than twelve hours following ten consecutive hours off duty, or for any period after having been on duty sixteen hours following ten consecutive hours off duty. Those are statutory numbers written over the adopted federal hours part for intrastate operation.
It depends on the carrier’s operating pattern rather than the driver’s. Section 75-363(9)(b) forbids driving after seventy hours on duty in any seven consecutive days if the employing motor carrier does not operate every day of the week, or after eighty hours in any period of eight consecutive days if the employing carrier operates motor vehicles every day of the week. Starting to take Sunday work moves an operation from one cycle to the other.
No. Section 75-363(9)(a) is written for motor carriers and drivers who engage in intrastate commerce as defined in section 75-362, which defines it as trade, traffic or transportation between places in Nebraska and not through any other state. A dispatch that crosses the line is outside the subsection for that trip. Because this work is often sold on availability rather than planned by lane, the question resolves per load rather than per driver.
Section 75-363(2)(b)(i) applies the adopted regulations to all vehicles of intrastate motor carriers “with a gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight, or gross combination weight over ten thousand pounds.” The chapter’s own definitions section states the commercial motor vehicle line at ten thousand one pounds or more, whichever is greater. The four measures are alternatives, so a heavier trailer can carry a combination over the line without the power unit changing.
Nothing in the article’s definitions section reaches it. A certificate is defined at § 75-302(3) as issued to common carriers by motor vehicle, and “common carrier” is defined at § 75-302(6) in terms of transporting passengers. A permit is defined at § 75-302(16) as issued to contract carriers, and “contract carrier” at § 75-302(7) is also a passenger definition. A license under § 75-302(12) covers household goods, railroad-employee transport and medicaid non-emergency medical transportation. “Regulated motor carrier” at § 75-302(19) is a passenger definition too. General intrastate freight appears in none of the four.
Not for general freight, and not by omission. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-307(3) provides that “nothing contained in this section shall be construed to authorize the commission to compel motor carriers other than those transporting household goods under section 75-309 or under a license issued pursuant to section 75-304.03 to carry cargo insurance.” The Legislature withheld the power rather than leaving it unused, so this is not a gap a future rulemaking could fill.
No. Section 75-307(2)(b) provides that the commission “may adopt and promulgate rules and regulations that require” the named classes to file a surety bond, policies of insurance, qualifications as a self-insurer, or other securities or agreements, “in a sum to be determined by the commission,” conditioned on compensating shippers or consignees for property in the carrier’s possession. The verb is permissive and the sum is set by rule rather than by statute.
One date, in one sentence, for the whole chapter. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-365(3) provides that for purposes of sections 75-362 to 75-369.07, when a provision refers to the date specified in that section, “such date is January 1, 2026.” The section’s source block records amendments through Laws 2026, LB781, § 9, with an effective date of April 15, 2026, so a summary written against an earlier year is describing a different body of adopted text throughout.
Yes, and it is easy to miss. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 75-365(2) provides that when the adopted regulations require a person to submit a report to the United States Department of Transportation or any other federal agency, “that person shall also submit a copy of the report to the Nebraska State Patrol.” The duty carries no weight condition and costs nothing to comply with, which makes it an unhelpful thing to be found short on.
Not to a purely intrastate operation. Section 75-363(12) provides that “49 C.F.R. 392.9a - Operating authority shall not apply to Nebraska motor carriers operating commercial motor vehicles solely in intrastate commerce.” The operative word is “solely”; an operation that sometimes leaves the state is not within the subsection for the trips that leave.
No. Every exclusion in § 75-363 is drawn on agricultural character or on a named vehicle class rather than on a weight a light combination could fall under — farm trucks registered under the state farm registration provision at sixteen tons or less, covered farm vehicles, fertilizer and agricultural chemical application equipment in units of three thousand five hundred gallons or less, and the marking provision for farm trucks and farm truck-tractors. None reaches a for-hire carrier of general property.
No table exists, and any figure quoted without seeing the operation would be invented. What an underwriter reads is the real shape of a long day against the twelve and sixteen hour statutory limits, which weekly cycle the carrier’s operating pattern puts it in, whether any dispatch leaves the state, the gross combination weight rating on the heaviest trailer used, cargo limits set against the heaviest load carried in a state that will not compel any, and the additional-insured and waiver terms flowing down from shipper agreements.
Every figure on this page was read at the source below on September 1, 2026, with the effective date of the version read. Treat each as current as of that date rather than as permanent.
Send the power unit and trailer ratings separately, the radius distribution, and whether any dispatch crosses a state line. We will size the program against the work the trucks actually do rather than against a statutory floor.
