Motor carrier classes by state
South Dakota’s whole safety and insurance position sits in one statutory sentence, and the sentence adopts two things and then excuses light equipment from only one of them. Parts 390 to 397 come off below twenty-six thousand and one pounds. Part 387, the financial-responsibility part, is named in the same adopting clause and is not named in the carve-out. A truck and gooseneck in this band is outside the safety parts and inside the money part at the same time.
What this equipment does everywhere — the tight delivery window, the deck somebody else loaded, the load worth many times what it weighs — belongs to the class rather than to South Dakota, and it is set out on the hot shot trucking insurance page instead of being restated here.
South Dakota’s own material is a drafting asymmetry inside a single sentence. The state adopts a block of federal regulation and then writes one modification that excuses lighter intrastate equipment from a named range of parts. The financial-responsibility part sits outside that range, and the modification does not reach it. That is not a tension to be reconciled; it is what the sentence says, and it produces a light combination with almost no state safety obligations and a live state-law insurance duty.
The second half of the answer lives in a different title of the code and looks nothing like an operating-authority regime, because it is not one. South Dakota registers commercial vehicles by a weight the operator elects, issues a certificate that rides in the cab, and makes exceeding the elected weight a criminal offence. There is no weight floor in the definition that starts it.
There is also a genuine absence here that runs deeper than in most states. The word insurance does not appear in either of South Dakota’s two motor carrier chapters, and the department’s power to make rules about carriers is bounded by statute to two subjects, neither of which is insurance. That absence is established below by reading, and it is why the state-law insurance duty arrives from the federal text rather than from anything South Dakota wrote.
Hauling for hire inside South Dakota on a combination under twenty-six thousand pounds? The safety parts come off and the financial-responsibility part does not, and the weight on your registration is a figure you chose rather than one the manufacturer set.
Send the maximum gross weight fixed on the commercial motor vehicle certificate and the heaviest configuration you actually run. If the second is larger than the first, that is a misdemeanour before it is an insurance question.
SDCL 49-28A-3 is captioned “Adoption of federal regulations--Penalty” and it does the whole job in one clause: “The state hereby adopts Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, subtitle B, chapter I, subchapter A, part 107 (subparts F and G only) and subchapter C, parts 171 to 180, inclusive, as amended through January 1, 2026, and Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, subtitle B, chapter III, subchapter B, part 387 and parts 390 to 397, inclusive, as amended through January 1, 2026, with the following modifications:”.
Read the second half of that adoption carefully, because the punctuation is doing work. What is adopted is “part 387 and parts 390 to 397, inclusive” — a single part named on its own, then a range. Two grammatically distinct objects joined by “and.”
Modification (1) then reads: “All references to interstate operations must also include intrastate operations except that drivers and motor carriers operating intrastate vehicles and combinations of vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight, or gross combination weight that does not equal or exceed twenty six thousand one pounds, which are not used to transport hazardous materials requiring placarding under part 177, or designed to transport more than fifteen passengers, including the driver, are not subject to parts 390 to 397, inclusive”.
The exception names “parts 390 to 397, inclusive” and stops there. It does not name part 387. The part that was set apart in the adopting clause is the part the carve-out does not mention, and there is no second sentence putting it back.
So a for-hire South Dakota intrastate combination under twenty-six thousand and one pounds, not placarded and not built for sixteen or more people, is excused from parts 390 through 397 — the general applicability, driver qualification, driving, equipment, hours of service, inspection and hazardous-materials-driving parts — while the financial-responsibility part continues to apply to it as a matter of South Dakota law, with all references to interstate operations reading as including intrastate ones.
This page states that as a reading of the sentence rather than as a settled construction. No South Dakota decision addressing the asymmetry was located. But the asymmetry is on the face of the text, it is not ambiguous about which parts the exception names, and an operator planning against the possibility that a court reads it the other way is planning against the less demanding outcome.
The carve-out is written in the negative — a vehicle is excused if its weight “does not equal or exceed twenty six thousand one pounds” — and it lists four ways of measuring that weight: “a gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight, or gross combination weight.”
The connector is “or,” and in a negative condition that is the demanding drafting rather than the generous one. To stay inside the exception the equipment has to fall short of twenty-six thousand and one pounds on every one of the four. Reach the figure on any single measure and the exception stops applying, and the whole of parts 390 through 397 attaches.
For a combination that matters more than it does for a single vehicle, because two of the four measures are about the combination rather than the truck. A three-quarter-ton or one-ton power unit rated well under the line can be paired with a trailer whose combined rating reaches it, and the gross combination weight rating is a specification of the pairing rather than of either piece. An operator who checked the truck and not the pairing has checked one of four numbers.
The other two measures are actual weights rather than ratings, which introduces a second way to cross without buying anything. A combination rated below the line can weigh above it on a heavy day. The statute treats an actual gross combination weight that equals or exceeds the figure exactly as it treats a rating that does.
Two further conditions ride alongside the weight, and each is an independent way to lose the exception. The vehicle must not be “used to transport hazardous materials requiring placarding under part 177,” and it must not be “designed to transport more than fifteen passengers, including the driver.” Neither is likely to bite on general freight, but the first one bites on a single placarded load and the exception is written per vehicle rather than per carrier.
If part 387 is adopted without the carve-out, the next question is where it does attach — and the answer is not zero. This has been reported wrongly elsewhere in this project in the direction that produces a false zero at exactly this weight class, so it is worth doing the arithmetic in the open.
The adopted part carries its own applicability rules, and South Dakota adopts them along with the rest. 49 CFR 387.3(a) applies the subpart to “for-hire motor carriers operating motor vehicles transporting property in interstate or foreign commerce,” and South Dakota’s modification (1) instructs that “All references to interstate operations must also include intrastate operations” — which is the mechanism that makes the part reach a carrier that never leaves the state.
Then 387.3(c)(1): “The rules in this subpart do not apply to a motor vehicle that has a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of less than 10,001 pounds.” That exception is part of the adopted text and it travels with it. There is no separate South Dakota instruction removing it.
So the state-law financial-responsibility duty attaches at a gross vehicle weight rating of ten thousand and one pounds and runs upward without interruption through the band this equipment occupies. A hot shot combination at fifteen to twenty-six thousand pounds is comfortably above the exception and comfortably below the safety carve-out — inside one adopted part and outside the other nine.
The amount is the federal schedule as adopted, frozen at the date the statute names, and that figure belongs to the general discussion of this class rather than to South Dakota; the state did not write it and did not modify it. What South Dakota did was decide that the schedule applies to intrastate operation, and decide not to excuse light equipment from it.
There is one more thing the operator should take from this section, and it is about how the two halves feel from the cab. Nothing about a South Dakota roadside inspection will make the insurance duty visible, because the parts an inspector works from are the ones that came off. The duty is real, it is state law, and it leaves no paper trail inside South Dakota at all.
Send the maximum gross weight fixed on your commercial motor vehicle certificate, all four weight measures for the heaviest configuration you run, and whether any placarded load ever moves. Those answers decide which South Dakota obligations are live before a coverage question is reached.
The chapter that carries the adoption has its own definition section, and it uses a different number from the one in the carve-out. Both are correct and they answer different questions.
SDCL 49-28A-1 provides: “The term, ‘motor vehicle’, as used in this chapter means any self-propelled or towed vehicle used on the highways in commerce to principally transport passengers or cargo: (1) If the vehicle has a gross vehicle weight of ten thousand and one or more pounds; (2) If the vehicle is designed to transport more than fifteen passengers, including the driver; or (3) If the vehicle is used in the transportation of materials found by the United States Department of Transportation to be hazardous for the purpose of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act, as amended.”
That section says what the chapter is about. It sets the population the chapter addresses — vehicles at ten thousand and one pounds gross vehicle weight or above, large passenger vehicles, and hazardous carriage. The carve-out in 49-28A-3 does something different: it says which of the adopted parts reach a vehicle that is already inside the chapter.
Read together they describe a shape that is unusual and internally consistent. A combination at fifteen thousand pounds is a motor vehicle for the chapter’s purposes under 49-28A-1(1). Being inside the chapter, it picks up the adoption in 49-28A-3. The modification then removes parts 390 to 397 from it and leaves part 387 in place. The two sections do not disagree; the first admits the vehicle to the chapter and the second sorts what the chapter then does to it.
Notice also that 49-28A-1 uses gross vehicle weight — an actual weight — where the carve-out uses four measures. The chapter admits a vehicle on one number and excuses it on four, which is a second reason to work out all of them for any given configuration rather than settling on the one that is easiest to find.
One more provision in the same sentence deserves naming because it is South Dakota’s only other modification. 49-28A-3(2) provides that for the purposes of the federal minimum age provision, “a driver must be at least twenty-one years old if engaged in interstate commerce, or transporting hazardous material of a type or quantity requiring placarding under part 177, or operating a vehicle designed to transport more than fifteen passengers, including the driver. All other drivers must be at least eighteen years old.” Twenty-one for three named situations, eighteen for everything else.
South Dakota’s second regime lives in Title 32 and looks unfamiliar to operators arriving from certificate states, because it is a registration and compensation regime rather than a grant of authority. It nevertheless produces a document, a plate and a criminal offence, and its definition has no weight in it.
SDCL 32-9-1 supplies the terms. “Compensation” is “the charge imposed upon motor carriers in consideration of the unusual use of the public highways in this state by such motor carriers.” A “compensation certificate” is “the certificate issued upon application by a motor carrier, as defined in §§ 32-9-2 and 32-9-3, showing authority to use and payment of compensation for the unusual use of the highways by the one to whom issued.” And “commercial motor vehicle” is “any motor vehicle used or maintained for the transportation of persons or property for hire, compensation or profit or designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property, and not specifically excluded under § 32-9-3.”
There is no pound figure in that last definition. For-hire transportation of property is the trigger. SDCL 32-9-2 then makes the carrier the person “owning, controlling, operating, or maintaining a commercial vehicle,” and 32-9-5 deems any such person to be making unusual use of the highways.
The mechanism that follows is where this becomes a hot shot question rather than a registration formality. SDCL 32-9-13 provides: “Every person, corporation, or limited liability company desiring to operate a motor vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer as a motor carrier of property on the public highways of this state shall choose and fix at the time of registration the maximum gross weight of the motor vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer, without regard to the manufacturer’s rated carrying capacity of the vehicle.”
The operator elects the number, and elects it expressly without reference to what the manufacturer says the equipment can carry. Then SDCL 32-9-14 closes it: “No person may operate a vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer as a commercial motor vehicle on the public highways of this state with a gross weight of more than the gross weight fixed and determined by the person and for which the person has paid commercial motor vehicle fees and received a commercial motor vehicle certificate. A violation of this section is a Class 2 misdemeanor.”
That is a declared-weight regime with a criminal sanction on the far side of a line the operator drew. On light-combination work, where the trailer changes and the load is whatever the customer needs moved, the temptation to declare conservatively and pay less is a temptation to create a misdemeanour that happens on a busy day rather than a compliance decision that stays put.
The application is not an afterthought to operating; the statute puts it in front. SDCL 32-9-6 provides that any person “desiring to operate a motor vehicle, trailer, semitrailer as a motor carrier of persons or property on the public highways of this state shall, before beginning the operations,” present an application on Department of Revenue forms to the county treasurer of their county of residence, or — for a nonresident — to the treasurer of any county through which they may travel.
The application must set out the manufacturer of the vehicle, the factory number, the engine number, the model, and “the desired gross weight classification or rated maximum seating capacity of the vehicle,” together with any other information the Department of Revenue considers necessary. The section closes: “A violation of this section is a Class 2 misdemeanor.” Operating before applying is itself an offence, separate from operating overweight.
SDCL 32-9-7 describes what comes back. On receipt of the application and payment of the fee, “and upon satisfactory evidence that the applicant has complied with all laws, rules, and regulations of this state covering motor vehicles and motor carriers,” the county treasurer or the department issues a receipt identifying the vehicle, assigns a number, endorses the number on the application and receipt, and issues a commercial motor vehicle certificate bearing that number. The certificate “shall be placed and carried in the vehicle in a conspicuous place and is subject to examination upon demand by any officer of this state, county, or municipality.” Two commercial motor vehicle plates are issued for each motor vehicle.
Two administrative details are worth knowing. The transaction runs through the county treasurer rather than a state office, and SDCL 32-9-12 requires the treasurer to mail the day’s applications to the department at the close of each day. And SDCL 32-9-21 lets a carrier discontinuing use of a vehicle return the plates and certificate with an application for discontinuance and receive a warrant for the remaining months of the year, less a ten dollar administrative fee retained by the county.
Registration is also where South Dakota does its carrier-fitness screening, and the screening is unusually broad. SDCL 32-9-17.1 requires the department or its agent to refuse a registration, plate, permit or certificate of title on a vehicle assigned to a commercial motor carrier that the federal agency has prohibited from operating, and permits suspension or removal of an existing one. SDCL 32-9-17.2 goes further, requiring refusal where a motor carrier fails to disclose material information, has made a materially false statement on the application, or where the carrier’s business “is operated, managed, or otherwise controlled or affiliated with a person who is ineligible for registration, including the applicant, owner, relative, corporate officer, or shareholder” — and it defines “relative” by listing husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, and four in-law relationships. A South Dakota registration can be refused over who a principal is related to.
The definition that has no weight in it does have a list attached to it, and the list is the place a light operator should look before concluding anything.
SDCL 32-9-3 is captioned “Exceptions from definitions of motor carrier and commercial vehicle” and opens: “For the purposes of this chapter, the following do not come within the definition of motor carriers or commercial vehicles if used in intrastate operations.” Sixteen numbered exceptions follow, and they were read in full for this page.
The first is the one with a weight in it, and it is small: “A motor vehicle registered in South Dakota used to carry private business property of five hundred pounds or less.” Note both limbs — the property has to be the operator’s own business property, and it has to be five hundred pounds or less. It is not a general small-vehicle exemption and it does not reach anyone hauling a customer’s freight for money.
The rest of the list is about who is hauling and what, rather than about how much. It covers vehicles carrying mounted farm and industrial equipment such as a cornsheller, feed grinder, haystack mover, sawmill, water well drilling equipment, power shovel or posthole auger; livestock waste and fertilizer or agricultural chemical transport; a licensed merchant’s vehicle under thirty thousand pounds delivering previously sold merchandise outside municipal limits; a farmer’s own farm transport, including livestock in equipment registered at twenty-six thousand pounds or less without monetary compensation; logging, mining and lumber milling products owned in fee by the vehicle owner; a licensed dealer’s inventory replacement vehicles; a school bus operating under a specified statute with a highway patrol letter; and a motor vehicle used to provide a prearranged ride as defined in SDCL 32-40-1.
None of the sixteen reaches a for-hire hot shot carrying general freight. Two of them contain weights — thirty thousand pounds for the merchant exception and twenty-six thousand for the farmer’s livestock limb — and both are conditioned on who owns the goods rather than on the size of the truck. The pattern across the whole list is that South Dakota excuses categories of people, not categories of equipment.
That is why the compensation-certificate side of South Dakota has no weight floor for this work while the safety side has one at twenty-six thousand and one pounds. They are not two readings of the same rule. They are two chapters that were written to different purposes, and the smaller the equipment, the further apart their answers get.
The reason South Dakota’s insurance duty arrives from the federal text rather than from a South Dakota rule is not an oversight. The department was never given the power to write one.
SDCL 49-28-33 is captioned “Rules governing motor carriers--Promulgation--Conformity with federal rules,” and it is the entire grant: “The department may pursuant to chapter 1-26 adopt rules to establish uniform procedures for the administration of the provisions of this chapter. Rules may be adopted by the department governing motor carriers in the following areas: (1) Filing information and reports; and (2) Registration and identification when performing interstate operations within the state. The Director of the Division of Highway Patrol may promulgate reasonable rules pursuant to chapter 1-26 to promote safety of operations, standards, and safety of equipment. The rules shall conform as nearly as possible with the rules and regulations for safety of operations and equipment adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation, pursuant to 49 U.S.C. Chapter 311 as amended through January 1, 2005.”
Two enumerated subjects for the department, and a separate safety power for the Highway Patrol director that is expressly required to conform to federal rules. No insurance-filing authority is conferred on anyone, which means no South Dakota cargo or liability filing rule could lawfully have been made under this section.
The absence is measurable rather than assumed. SDCL chapter 49-28, Motor Carrier Regulation, and SDCL chapter 32-9, Commercial Motor Vehicle Certificates, were both fetched as complete chapter documents and read as full text. The word “cargo” does not appear in either. The word “insurance” does not appear in either. On the administrative side, the complete index of South Dakota Administrative Rules — 554 articles with agency, status and catchline — establishes that article 61:23, Motor Carrier Safety and Transportation of Hazardous Materials, under Public Safety, is the only motor carrier article in the entire body of rules; it was read in full and contains one chapter and four sections, two of them repealed, the others an agricultural hours exemption and out-of-service criteria. Neither is an insurance rule. The Public Utilities Commission’s motor carrier chapters — 20:10:02 general motor carrier rules, 20:10:03 regulated motor carriers and 20:10:04 exempt motor carriers — are each marked “Repealed.”
Chapter 49-28 is largely a shell for the same reason. Dozens of its sections were repealed across three main waves in 1985, 1995 and 2014, and what survives is administrative rather than regulatory. The nearest thing to a filing duty is SDCL 49-28-50: “Each motor carrier shall prepare and file with the department, at such time, and in the form to be prescribed by the department, reports and statements giving to the department such information as it requires in order to perform its duties under this chapter.” That is an information duty, not an insurance certificate.
The consequence for an operator is worth stating plainly. There is no South Dakota office holding evidence of your coverage, no state form, no cancellation notice mechanism and nothing that lapses. The obligation is real and invisible, which is a combination that produces surprises rather than warnings.
South Dakota has one statute that reaches directly into the contracts this class of work runs on, and it is worth knowing before signing rather than after a claim.
SDCL 49-28-70 defines the terms. A “motor carrier transportation contract” is “a contract or agreement between a motor carrier and a promisee covering the transportation of property for hire by the motor carrier; the motor carrier’s entrance on property for the purpose of loading, unloading, or transporting property for hire; or any service of the motor carrier that is incidental to these activities, including the storage of property.” A “promisee” is anyone who enters into such a contract with a motor carrier, and an “affiliate” is defined to reach the promisee’s employees, agents and directly responsible independent contractors.
SDCL 49-28-71 then provides: “Notwithstanding any other law, no provision of a motor carrier transportation contract, and no covenant or agreement collateral to or affecting a motor carrier transportation contract, may require the motor carrier to indemnify, hold harmless, or defend the promisee or affiliate, or have the effect of indemnifying, holding harmless, or defending the promisee or affiliate from or against any liability for loss or damage resulting from the negligence, intentional acts, or omissions of the promisee or affiliate. Any provision of any contract or agreement entered into after July 1, 2012 that violates this section is void and unenforceable.”
Three features of that make it more useful than it first appears. It reaches “no covenant or agreement collateral to or affecting” the contract, so it is not defeated by moving the indemnity into a side letter or a load confirmation. It reaches provisions that “have the effect of” indemnifying, so a broadly worded insurance-procurement clause achieving the same result is inside it. And the definition of the contract expressly includes the carrier’s entrance onto property for loading and unloading, which is where a great deal of this work’s liability actually arises.
What the section does not do is remove a carrier’s liability for its own negligence, and it does not remove the ordinary additional-insured and primary-and-non-contributory requirements that shipper contracts impose. It voids the transfer of the promisee’s own fault. A carrier still needs to read what it has agreed to insure, and a broker form drafted for a state without this statute will still contain the clause — void here and enforceable elsewhere on the same load if the route crosses a line.
The date matters as much as the text. The section reaches agreements entered into after July 1, 2012, so an older master agreement that has simply been renewed by conduct is a question worth asking about rather than assuming.
There is no rate table here and nothing on this page is a price. What follows is the set of facts a South Dakota file actually turns on, and they are unusual because two of them are numbers the operator chose.
The declared maximum gross weight comes first. It is fixed at registration under SDCL 32-9-13 “without regard to the manufacturer’s rated carrying capacity,” it appears on the commercial motor vehicle certificate carried in the cab, and exceeding it is a Class 2 misdemeanour under 32-9-14. The single most useful question on a South Dakota submission is whether the declared figure and the heaviest configuration actually operated are the same number.
The four safety measures come second, and all four are needed. Gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight and gross combination weight are each an independent route across the twenty-six thousand and one pound line, and crossing on any one of them attaches parts 390 through 397 in full — hours of service, driver qualification, inspection and the rest. An operation that lives just under the line on three measures and reaches it on the fourth is not a marginal case; it is inside.
Commodity is third and it works in two directions. A placarded load removes the safety carve-out for that vehicle by its own terms, and it also engages the hazardous materials parts adopted in the first half of 49-28A-3 — part 107 subparts F and G, and parts 171 to 180. On an otherwise general-freight book, one such load changes the applicable rule set.
Cargo limit is fourth, and it is a pure commercial judgment here because the state contributes nothing to it. No South Dakota chapter contains the word cargo. There is no minimum, no filing and no waiver affidavit. What the carrier buys is what stands behind the freight, and on work where a single load can be worth many times what it weighs, a limit chosen against a typical load is chosen against the wrong one.
Contract terms are fifth and they are unusually consequential in this state. SDCL 49-28-71 voids indemnity for the promisee’s own negligence in agreements entered into after July 1, 2012, which changes what a broker form actually achieves — but only for the South Dakota portion of a book that may run into four neighboring states, each with its own answer. Additional-insured wording, primary and non-contributory language and waivers of subrogation are unaffected by that section and remain live.
Registration standing is sixth, and it is a fact about people rather than equipment. Under SDCL 32-9-17.1 and 32-9-17.2, a South Dakota registration can be refused or removed because of a federal out-of-service order, a material non-disclosure, a false statement, or an affiliation with an ineligible person including a listed relative. An operation whose principals have a history elsewhere has a South Dakota exposure that has nothing to do with how it drives.
No South Dakota statute or rule read for this page names this work. There is no defined term for it, no dedicated certificate class and no separate filing. The state reaches it through a federal adoption with one asymmetric modification and through a compensation-certificate regime written in 1939 and amended ever since.
The negatives on this page rest on full-text reads rather than on searches that came up empty, and the reads are worth stating. SDCL chapter 32-9, Commercial Motor Vehicle Certificates, was fetched as one complete chapter document and read; a sweep for cargo, insurance, indemnity, surety, bond, loss or damage, Form H, shipper, consignee, property of others and financial responsibility returned nothing on the insurance axis. SDCL chapter 49-28, Motor Carrier Regulation, was fetched complete and read; the only hits on that sweep were the indemnity sections at 49-28-70 and 49-28-71, which are a contract rule rather than a filing. SDCL chapter 49-28A, Hazardous Material Transportation Safety, was fetched complete and read; its cargo references are hazmat cargo-tank and load-inspection language.
On the rules side, the complete index of South Dakota Administrative Rules — all 554 articles — was fetched, establishing that ARSD article 61:23 is the only active motor carrier article in the entire body. It was read in full: one chapter, four sections, two repealed, the remaining two an agricultural hours-of-service exemption and out-of-service criteria. ARSD article 20:10 was read to the chapter list, which shows 20:10:02, 20:10:03 and 20:10:04 each marked “Repealed.” Two Department of Revenue articles on vehicle regulation and vehicle titling were read and contain nothing on cargo or insurance.
One reading is stated as a reading rather than a holding. That part 387 survives the carve-out in 49-28A-3(1) follows from the text — the exception names parts 390 to 397 and does not name part 387 — and no South Dakota authority construing the point was located. That the resulting duty attaches at ten thousand and one pounds rather than at zero follows from 49 CFR 387.3(c)(1), which is inside the adopted text and was read at the federal source this run.
What an operator cannot do is find the answer in one place. It is assembled from one statutory sentence with two objects and two modifications, a chapter definition that admits the vehicle on a different number, a registration statute in a different title that turns on a weight the operator elects, and a federal part whose own applicability rules came along with the adoption.
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 South Dakota 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 South Dakota 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.
Not below 26,001 pounds, subject to two conditions. SDCL 49-28A-3(1) excuses drivers and motor carriers operating intrastate vehicles and combinations whose gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight or gross combination weight “does not equal or exceed twenty six thousand one pounds,” provided the vehicle is not used to transport placarded hazardous materials under part 177 and is not designed to carry more than fifteen passengers including the driver, from “parts 390 to 397, inclusive.” Reaching the figure on any one of the four measures ends the exception.
No, and that is the distinctive thing about the sentence. SDCL 49-28A-3 adopts “part 387 and parts 390 to 397, inclusive,” and modification (1) names only “parts 390 to 397, inclusive” in its carve-out. Part 387 is set apart in the adopting clause and is not mentioned in the exception, so it continues to apply to an intrastate operation with all references to interstate operations reading as including intrastate ones.
No — the requirement is live, and the answer is not zero. The adopted part carries its own applicability rules, and 49 CFR 387.3(c)(1) provides that “The rules in this subpart do not apply to a motor vehicle that has a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of less than 10,001 pounds.” Above that rating the adopted part applies as South Dakota state law. A combination in the fifteen to twenty-six thousand pound band is above the exception and below the safety carve-out at the same time.
No, and no filing of any kind. SDCL chapters 49-28 and 32-9 were both read as complete chapter documents for this page and neither contains the word cargo or the word insurance. SDCL 49-28-33 bounds the department’s rulemaking power over motor carriers to two subjects — filing information and reports, and registration and identification for interstate operations — so no insurance-filing rule could lawfully have been made under it.
A registration document rather than an operating authority. SDCL 32-9-1(2) defines a compensation certificate as one “showing authority to use and payment of compensation for the unusual use of the highways.” SDCL 32-9-7 requires the certificate to be “placed and carried in the vehicle in a conspicuous place” and makes it subject to examination on demand by any state, county or municipal officer. Two commercial motor vehicle plates are issued for each vehicle.
The operator does. SDCL 32-9-13 requires a person desiring to operate as a motor carrier of property to “choose and fix at the time of registration the maximum gross weight of the motor vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer, without regard to the manufacturer’s rated carrying capacity of the vehicle.” SDCL 32-9-14 then makes operating above the weight the person fixed and paid for a Class 2 misdemeanour. Declaring low to reduce fees creates an offence that occurs on the first heavy day.
There is a five hundred pound exception and it does not reach for-hire work. SDCL 32-9-3(1) removes from the definitions “A motor vehicle registered in South Dakota used to carry private business property of five hundred pounds or less.” Both limbs matter — it must be the operator’s own business property, and it must be five hundred pounds or less. The remaining fifteen exceptions in that section were read in full and turn on farming, logging, dealers, merchants and prearranged rides rather than on vehicle size.
Not in an agreement entered into after July 1, 2012. SDCL 49-28-71 voids any provision of a motor carrier transportation contract, or any collateral covenant, requiring the carrier to indemnify, hold harmless or defend the promisee or its affiliate against liability for loss or damage resulting from the promisee’s or affiliate’s own negligence, intentional acts or omissions — including provisions that merely “have the effect of” doing so. The contract definition in SDCL 49-28-70 expressly covers entering property to load or unload.
There is no table to quote and any figure offered without seeing the operation would be invented. What moves it is the maximum gross weight fixed on the certificate against the heaviest configuration actually run, all four weight measures against the 26,001 pound line, whether any placarded load is carried, the cargo limit chosen in a state that sets none, the registration standing of the principals under SDCL 32-9-17.2, the effect of SDCL 49-28-71 on the contracts in force, and the radius distribution across four state lines.
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.
