Motor carrier classes by state
Rhode Island regulates the truck and the business in two different titles, under two different officials, starting at two different points. The department of revenue reaches the vehicle’s safety from 10,001 pounds. The public utilities administrator reaches the business of carrying property for money from the first paid pound — through a certificate, a liability filing and a cargo filing that share no weight element at all.
This page does not cover the class. How the work is sold, loaded and dispatched is the same in Providence as anywhere, and it is answered on the hot shot trucking insurance page. What is answered here is the part Rhode Island decides, which turns out to be unusually large and unusually divided.
Look for this trade by name in the Rhode Island General Laws and it is not there. Nothing defines it, nothing licenses it as a class, nothing tabulates a filing for it. Rhode Island gets to it the way it gets to all property carriage: through a weight figure in the vehicle title, and through the fact of carrying for money in the public utilities title. Those are two separate instruments and they do not start in the same place.
The split is the whole story here and it is why a single number never answers the question. An operator who reads only the safety chapter concludes that Rhode Island does not reach a light truck until 10,001 pounds. An operator who reads only chapter 39-12 concludes that Rhode Island reaches every paid load regardless of equipment. Both readings are accurate about their own chapter and neither is a description of the state.
Each number here carries the section it came from. The safety statute has been amended on a schedule of its own, while several sections of the carrier chapter trace a legislative history back to 1935. Treating them as one regime on one clock would describe something Rhode Island does not have.
Carrying property for compensation inside Rhode Island? The certificate, the liability filing and the cargo filing all attach at the first paid load, and none of them asks what the truck weighs.
Tell us whether the work runs for the general public or under continuing contracts with named shippers. That single answer decides whether Rhode Island wants a certificate or a permit, and the two are separate applications with separate fees.
Rhode Island’s motor carrier safety rule sits in the vehicle title. R.I. Gen. Laws §31-23-1(b)(1) provides that “all commercial motor vehicles must meet applicable standards set forth in this chapter and chapter 24 of this title and in the federal motor carrier safety regulations (FMCSR) contained in 49 CFR Parts 387 and 390-399”, together with named hazardous materials parts, “as amended except as may be determined by the administrator to be inapplicable to a state enforcement program … as may be amended from time to time.”
The weight in that section is at subsection (c), and it defines a different word than the one subsection (b)(1) uses. Subsection (c) reads: “For the purposes of this section, ‘carrier’ is defined as any company or person who furthers their commercial or private enterprise by use of a vehicle that has a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of ten thousand and one (10,001) or more pounds, or that transports hazardous material.”
So the operative sentence imposes standards on “commercial motor vehicles” and the only definition the section supplies is of “carrier”. Rhode Island’s vehicle title does not define commercial motor vehicle for this purpose — §31-1-3, the types-of-vehicles definitional section, was read for one and has none. The 10,001 pound figure recorded on this page is the subsection (c) carrier threshold, which is the operative weight line the section actually states, and the definitional gap is noted rather than papered over.
Two further features of that subsection are worth naming. It is expressed as a gross vehicle weight rating only, with no gross combination figure anywhere in the section — which for a truck pulling a loaded gooseneck leaves an open question the statute does not answer. And its phrase “commercial or private enterprise” reaches private carriage as well as for-hire carriage, which is a wider sweep than the carrier chapter takes.
The administering official is the one most secondary summaries get wrong. The same subsection provides that “Rules and Regulations shall be promulgated by the director of the department of revenue for the administration and enforcement of motor carrier safety”, and the enforcement provisions in subsections (d) and (e) run to examiners, investigators and regulatory inspectors “from the department of revenue”. Not administration. The live text says revenue.
The business side lives somewhere else entirely. R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-2(1) provides that “‘Administrator’ means the public utilities administrator”, and every economic and insurance obligation in chapter 39-12 runs to that officer. Two officials, two titles, and the one holding the certificate file is not the one inspecting the truck.
R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-6 provides that “Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, no person shall engage in the business of transporting property for compensation in intrastate commerce over the publicly used highways as a common carrier, unless there shall be in force with respect to the carrier a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the administrator authorizing the operations.” There is no weight in that sentence, no equipment description and no rating band.
Nor is there one in the definitions the sentence relies on. §39-12-2(3) defines a common carrier as any person who undertakes “to transport property, or any class or classes of property, by motor vehicle between points within this state, for the general public for compensation, over the publicly used highways of this state, whether over regular or irregular routes.” §39-12-2(13) defines a motor vehicle as “any vehicle, machine, truck, tractor-trailer, or semi-trailer propelled or drawn by any mechanical power and used upon the highways in the transportation of property”, excluding rail. Neither carries a weight element.
The certificate is not the only track, and which track an operator is on turns on how the work is sold rather than on what it moves. §39-12-9 requires a permit rather than a certificate for a contract carrier, defined at §39-12-2(4) as a person transporting property in intrastate commerce for compensation “under continuing contracts with one person or an unlimited number of persons for the furnishing of transportation services of a special and individual nature required by the shipper and not generally provided by common carriers.” A great deal of light-combination work is sold exactly that way.
Both applications carry a stated fee and both carry a hearing. The certificate application under §39-12-6 is “accompanied by a fee of two hundred and fifty dollars ($250)”. The contract carrier permit application under §39-12-9 is “accompanied by a fee of one hundred dollars ($100)”. Each must be in writing and verified by oath or written declaration under penalties of perjury. The administrator fixes a time and place of hearing on every application, with notice by publication or written notice mailed at least ten days before the date fixed, to all carriers serving any part of the route or territory proposed, and to any other person the administrator considers interested or affected. Any person with an interest may make representations and introduce evidence for or against.
One provision saves an operator from holding both. §39-12-21, headed Dual operations, provides in its entirety: “Persons holding a certificate as a common carrier may also perform as a contract carrier under the authority of certificate.” The relationship runs one way. A permit holder is not given common carrier authority by the same section.
And private carriage is outside the chapter altogether by express words. §39-12-2(17) defines a private carrier as a person other than a common, contract or interstate carrier who transports property of which the person is owner, lessee or bailee for the purpose of sale, lease, rent or bailment or in furtherance of a commercial enterprise, and then adds: “The private carrier shall be exempted from the provisions of this chapter.”
R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-27 conditions the certificate itself on the filing: “No certificate or permit shall be issued to a motor carrier or remain in force, unless the carrier shall have furnished the administrator with evidence of insured financial responsibility.” Not a condition of renewal and not a condition of a later audit. A lapse in the filing takes the authority with it.
The public liability limb is expressed as split limits with a bracketed maximum, and the property damage figure carries a parenthetical that shapes the whole section. The carrier must show ability to meet claims “by reason of personal injury to, or the death of, any one person in an amount of at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($250,000), or by reason of personal injuries to, or the death of, all persons injured or killed in any one accident of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) (subject to a maximum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) for bodily injuries to or the death of one person), and for damages to property (excluding cargo) in the amount of at least twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000).”
Read the parenthetical. The property damage limb expressly excludes cargo — and then the very next sentence of the same section imposes cargo separately. “No common or contract carrier by motor vehicle shall engage in intrastate commerce, nor shall any certificate or permit be issued to the carrier or remain in force, unless and until there shall be filed with the administrator evidence of insured financial responsibility by the carriers to meet any and all legally established claim or claims for loss or damage to all property belonging to the shipper or consignee and coming into possession of the carriers in connection with their motor carrier transportation service in an amount of at least twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000)”.
That is a $25,000 figure stated once, without the per-vehicle and aggregate split that federal cargo tables and several other states use. It is recorded here as written rather than mapped onto a shape it does not have.
The one thing that can switch the cargo requirement off is not self-executing, and the qualifier travels with the figure: “provided, however, that the requirements of this section shall not apply in connection with the transportation of commodities declared by the administrator, after notice and hearing, to be exempt from cargo insurance requirements.” An exemption requires an affirmative declaration by the administrator following notice and a hearing. No list of commodities so declared was located for this page, and that gap is named rather than filled.
Three ways of satisfying the requirement are given. A certificate of insurance from an insurance company authorized to transact business in the state, showing a policy in force covering public liability, property damage and damage or loss to cargo in at least the prescribed minimums. Or a certificate from the general treasurer, on blanks the administrator furnishes, that the carrier has filed a bond of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) with a surety company authorized in Rhode Island. Or self-insurance, which the administrator “will give consideration to and will approve” on a true and accurate statement of financial condition establishing ability to satisfy the obligations “without affecting the stability or permanency of the business”.
Two mechanical details finish the section and both matter operationally. A filing fee of ten dollars ($10.00) “must accompany each insurance filing”. And nothing may be canceled or withdrawn until after thirty days’ written notice to the administrator at the Providence office, with the period commencing “from the date the notice is actually received” — unless a replacement filing acceptable to the administrator arrives on or before the cancellation date, in which case the earlier cancellation may take effect. No cancellation may become effective before the administrator receives the notice.
Tell us whether you haul for the general public or under continuing contracts, how many power units and trailers you run, and the value of the heaviest shipment you carry. Those three answers decide which Rhode Island filings attach and what the cargo exposure actually is.
Most states leave the terms of carriage to the bill of lading and the tariff. Rhode Island does not, and this is the provision that makes the state genuinely different for anyone whose exposure is the freight rather than the truck.
R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-28 requires a common carrier receiving property for transportation between points within the state to issue a receipt or bill of lading, and makes it liable to the lawful holder “for the actual loss, damage, or injury to the property … notwithstanding any limitation of liability or limitation of the amount of recovery or representation or agreement as to value in any receipt or bill of lading, or any contract, rule, regulation, or in any tariff filed with the administrator; and the limitation without respect to the manner or form in which it is sought to be made is hereby declared to be unlawful and void.”
The liability runs to the holder of the receipt or bill of lading “or to any party entitled to recover thereon, whether the receipt or bill of lading has been issued or not”. Failing to issue the document does not avoid the exposure; it only removes the record of it.
There is one route to a limited liability and it is not a contract term the parties can simply agree. The full-actual-loss rule “shall not apply to property received for transportation concerning which the motor carrier shall have been or shall hereafter be expressly authorized or required by order of the administrator to establish and maintain rates dependent upon the value declared in writing by the shipper or agreed upon in writing as the released value of the property”. That takes an order of the administrator, who is empowered to make one where value-varying rates “would, in his or her opinion, be just and reasonable”, and any tariff filed under such an order must contain specific reference to it.
The section also sets floors on the claim and suit windows that a carrier may not shorten. It is “unlawful for any motor common carrier to provide by rule, contract, regulation, or otherwise, a shorter period for the filing of claims than nine (9) months, and for the institution of suits than two (2) years”, with the suit period computed “from the day when notice in writing is given by the carrier to the claimant that the carrier has disallowed the claim or any part or parts thereof”. A carrier’s standard terms cannot compress either one.
The insurance consequence is direct and it is the opposite of what an operator usually assumes. In many places a released-value or limitation clause in the shipper agreement is the practical ceiling on a cargo claim, and the motor truck cargo limit is bought against that ceiling. On intrastate Rhode Island carriage that ceiling is unlawful and void unless the administrator has ordered otherwise, and the exposure is the actual loss. A limit set by reading the contract will be set too low.
R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-26 splits registration by commerce. Interstate motor carriers register and identify their vehicles under the federal unified carrier registration machinery named in the section. “All intrastate carriers not subject to the provisions of the foregoing federal law shall apply to the administrator for the issuance of a vehicle identification device for the registration and identification of vehicles and shall be assessed twenty dollars ($20.00) for each identification device for which an application is made.”
The device is annual — it “shall be furnished annually to every carrier whose duty it shall be to apply for it” — and it is per vehicle. The prohibition attached to it is broad: “It shall be unlawful for any motor vehicle to be engaged in transporting property for compensation in either intrastate or interstate commerce without the owner of it having applied for and received the required identification device, unless the vehicle is exempted from the provisions of this chapter.”
Two administrative details follow that catch fleets which change equipment. Each device is accompanied by a registration card issued by the administrator “which shall be in the possession of the vehicle’s driver when the vehicle is operating”. And transfers of the device from one vehicle to another “are hereby prohibited unless authorized by the administrator”. Buying a replacement truck does not move the device with the operation.
The administrator also retains a discretionary hold. He or she “may refuse to reissue the identification device to the holder of any certificate, permit, or permit of registration, pending any complaint or hearing upon the question of revocation or suspension”. Violations of the section are subject to the fines enumerated in §31-41.1-4 — which is in the vehicle title, not this one, and is a small example of how often the two titles reach across.
Rhode Island’s safety adoption is broad and largely unmodified, and it is rolling rather than frozen. §31-23-1(b)(1) adopts the named parts “as amended … as may be amended from time to time”, so a federal amendment reaches an intrastate Rhode Island carrier through this section without state action.
Sitting inside that adoption clause is a standing carve-out power that is easy to read past and is load-bearing, so it is carried here in full: the parts are adopted “as amended except as may be determined by the administrator to be inapplicable to a state enforcement program”. That is an unenumerated power to disapply, held by the administrator, written into the adoption itself rather than into a separate provision.
The statute then makes one express modification, and it is a driver-qualification provision rather than an hours one. “Part 391.11(b)(1) of FMCSR, 49 CFR 391.11(b)(1) shall not apply to intrastate drivers of commercial motor vehicles except for drivers of school buses and vehicles placarded under 49 CFR Part 172, Subpart F.” The minimum age requirement in that paragraph is off for intrastate drivers, and the two exceptions are stated on the face of the sentence.
A state declining to impose a federal age floor has said nothing about whether a market will write the risk. Those are separate decisions taken by separate people on separate evidence. A market may load for age, require a stated number of years behind the wheel, or write the policy to named drivers only — and it does so from what it has paid out on drivers of that profile, not from §31-23-1.
The hours part is adopted within the 390 to 399 range with no stated modification in this section, and no air-mile or short-radius provision appears in it. The implementing rules made under the section by the department of revenue were not read for this page, so no negative is asserted about what they may contain.
The enforcement subsections of §31-23-1 are unusually specific about scope of inspection, and they reach the paperwork as well as the equipment.
Subsection (d) gives authorized examiners, investigators, officers and regulatory inspectors from the department of revenue with proper identification, together with the state police and trained local law enforcement officials, “a right of entry and authority to examine all equipment of motor carriers and lessors and enter upon and perform inspections of motor carrier vehicles in operation.” It then extends that to records: authority “to inspect, examine, and copy all accounts, books, records, memoranda, correspondence and other documents of the motor carriers and or lessors”, and the same categories held by any person controlling, controlled by or under common control of any carrier, so far as they relate to enforcement of the chapter.
Subsection (e) is the out-of-service machinery and it names the sticker’s position on each end of a combination. Any vehicle that “by reason of its mechanical condition or loading, is so imminently hazardous to operate as to be likely to cause an accident or a breakdown” shall be declared out of service. The sticker “shall be affixed to the driver’s window on power units placed out of service and, affixed to the left front corner of trailers or semi-trailers placed out of service.” No person may remove it before all required repairs are complete.
Two operating rules follow. A vehicle discovered to be in an unsafe condition while on the highway “may be continued in operation only to the nearest place where repairs can be safely effected”, and that movement is permitted “only if it is less hazardous to the public than to permit the vehicle to remain on the highway”. Continuing a run to the delivery point is not one of the options the subsection gives.
Carriers convicted of violating the rules and regulations established under subsection (b) are fined as provided in §31-41.1-4 for each offense — per offense, not per stop.
Rhode Island sets minimums and fees and stops there. The price of the cover is not something any section of the General Laws decides. What follows is the sequence a market actually works through, rearranged, because this state has one provision most states do not.
Cargo is first here, which is not true in most states, and the reason is §39-12-28. Where a limitation of liability is unlawful and void unless the administrator has ordered otherwise, the exposure on an intrastate load is the actual loss and not the contract figure. So the commodity profile, and what a single high-value consignment is actually worth, matter more here than anything else on this list — and a limit reasoned from the shipper agreement will be wrong in one direction only.
Authority form is second, because it changes which application, which fee and which filings the operator is inside. Common carrier work for the general public runs on a certificate at a $250 application fee; continuing contracts of a special and individual nature run on a permit at $100; a certificate holder may do both under §39-12-21 while a permit holder may not.
Fleet count is third and it is an unusually literal input in this state, because §39-12-26 assesses $20.00 per identification device per year and forbids transferring a device between vehicles without the administrator’s authorization. A fleet that turns equipment over frequently touches that section more often than a static one.
The 10,001 pound safety line matters fourth, and mainly for what it does not settle. Subsection (c) is expressed as a gross vehicle weight rating with no gross combination figure, so for a truck-and-trailer operation the question of what is being rated is left open by the text. The honest input is both ratings, given separately, plus whether the trailer is ever run loaded behind a different power unit.
Radius and the state line sit underneath everything. Rhode Island is small enough that a great many operations that describe themselves as local are in fact interstate on most days, and that changes the registration route under §39-12-26, the financial responsibility posture, and which set of records has to exist. The useful answer is a distribution of destinations, not a maximum.
And the contract stack closes it, as it does everywhere. Additional-insured status, primary and non-contributory wording and waivers of subrogation required by shipper and broker agreements change the program without changing anything about the truck — and in Rhode Island they sit on top of a statutory liability rule the parties are not free to write around.
There is no entry to look up. Neither the vehicle title’s safety section nor chapter 39-12 uses the language operators use for this business, and neither creates a class, a permit type, a filing table or an endorsement for it. The forty-four section entries of chapter 39-12 were enumerated for this page and the chapter’s captions describe carriers, certificates, permits, tariffs, rates, bills of lading and security — not equipment configurations.
That absence is a finding rather than a gap. Rhode Island regulates this work through thresholds drawn for motor carriage generally, and a truck-and-trailer operation then happens to sit across them. What makes the state distinctive is not that it wrote something for the class — it is that it put safety and business in different titles under different officials with different starting points, and then wrote a cargo liability rule that the parties cannot contract away.
So the answer has to be assembled: a safety section in Title 31 with a definitional gap in it, a certificate or permit under Title 39 chapter 12, a three-part security filing conditioning that authority, an annual per-vehicle device, and a bill of lading statute that sets the measure of a cargo claim. Five instruments, written across ninety years, that do not cross-reference one another.
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 Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island 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.
No. R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-6 forbids engaging in the business of transporting property for compensation in intrastate commerce as a common carrier without a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the public utilities administrator, and the section contains no weight element. Neither do the definitions it relies on: §39-12-2(3) common carrier and §39-12-2(13) motor vehicle carry none. The chapter’s seven exemptions at §39-12-3 are United States mail, federal government vehicles, cooperative group vehicles, farm commodities and supplies, snow removal, garbage and debris, and newspapers. All seven were read and every one is commodity-based or ownership-based.
It turns on how the work is sold. §39-12-6 requires a certificate of a common carrier, defined at §39-12-2(3) as one who undertakes to transport property for the general public for compensation. §39-12-9 requires a permit of a contract carrier, defined at §39-12-2(4) as one who transports under continuing contracts for services of a special and individual nature required by the shipper and not generally provided by common carriers. The certificate application carries a $250 fee and the permit application $100. Under §39-12-21 a certificate holder may also perform as a contract carrier; the reverse is not provided.
Yes. R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-27 conditions the certificate or permit on evidence of insured financial responsibility for loss or damage to all property belonging to the shipper or consignee coming into the carrier’s possession, in an amount of at least $25,000. That is stated as a single figure with no per-vehicle and aggregate split. The section’s liability limb expressly excludes cargo, so the two are separate obligations. The only relief is for commodities the administrator has declared exempt after notice and hearing, which is not self-executing.
Generally no. R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-28 makes a common carrier liable for the actual loss notwithstanding any limitation of liability, limitation of recovery, or agreement as to value in any bill of lading, contract, rule, regulation or filed tariff, and declares such limitation unlawful and void. The one exception requires an order of the administrator authorizing rates dependent on a value declared in writing by the shipper or agreed as released value, with the tariff referencing that order. The section also forbids a claim period shorter than nine months or a suit period shorter than two years.
Under §39-12-27, at least $250,000 for personal injury to or death of any one person; $500,000 for all persons injured or killed in any one accident, subject to a maximum of $250,000 for any one person; and at least $25,000 for damages to property, cargo excluded. A $10.00 filing fee accompanies each insurance filing. The alternatives are a $100,000 bond filed with the general treasurer, or self-insurance approved by the administrator on a statement of financial condition. Cancellation requires thirty days written notice running from actual receipt at the administrator’s Providence office.
It is the vehicle identification device under R.I. Gen. Laws §39-12-26. Intrastate carriers not subject to the federal unified carrier registration machinery apply to the administrator for a device for each vehicle and are assessed twenty dollars for each application. The device is furnished annually, comes with a registration card that must be in the driver’s possession while the vehicle is operating, and may not be transferred from one vehicle to another unless the administrator authorizes it.
The department of revenue. R.I. Gen. Laws §31-23-1(b)(1) provides that rules and regulations for the administration and enforcement of motor carrier safety shall be promulgated by the director of the department of revenue, and subsections (d) and (e) give inspection and out-of-service authority to examiners and inspectors from that department alongside the state police and trained local officials. Widely circulated summaries attribute this to the department of administration; the live statutory text says revenue.
No Rhode Island statute prices the cover, and a number produced sight unseen would be fiction. What moves it here starts with commodity value, because §39-12-28 measures an intrastate cargo claim by actual loss and voids contractual limitation. After that: whether the operation runs on a certificate or a permit, the number of vehicles given the annual per-device assessment, the power unit and trailer ratings given separately, how often a nominally local operation crosses a state line, and whatever the shipper agreement obliges the policy to do.
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.
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.
