Motor carrier classes by state
Texas decides whether this operation is regulated by reading a definition three measures wide, and one of the three is the weight written on your registration rather than anything on a scale. A combination can be under the line by gross weight and over it by the number the owner chose at the county tax office, and the chapter that requires the registration and the rule that applies the safety regulations do not count the same three measures.
Much of what shapes this exposure travels with the trade rather than with the jurisdiction: how urgency converts into a rate, why a flat deck loaded three different ways in one week is a different underwriting object each time, and what happens when the freight aboard is worth several multiples of what a typical load is worth. That material sits on the hot shot trucking insurance pillar. What follows is Texas only.
Texas contributes something narrower and more consequential: a definitional test with an unusual third limb. Registration under Tex. Transp. Code § 643.051(a) is owed by a motor carrier operating “a commercial motor vehicle, as defined by Section 548.001”, and § 548.001(1)(A) reaches a vehicle or combination with “a gross weight, registered weight, or gross weight rating of more than 26,000 pounds.”
Registered weight is a declaration. It is chosen at registration, it appears on the cab card, and it is not a measurement of anything. An operator who registers a combination high — for headroom, for a seasonal load, because the dealer suggested it — has selected into a regulatory class without loading a pound. That is the single most useful thing to know about Texas for this equipment, and it is also the thing most easily missed, because operators reason about weight in terms of what the truck can carry.
The other half of this page is the gap between two Texas instruments that look like they should agree. The Department of Public Safety’s safety rule tests two measures where the Department of Motor Vehicles’ registration definition tests three, and the measure it drops is the one on your cab card. A configuration can therefore be inside one chapter and outside the other, which is not an error and is not resolved by anything either instrument says.
Each figure that follows names the instrument it came from and the date on the version read. That matters here because Texas maintains the safety adoption and the insurance rule in two different agencies, and they moved in 2022 and twice again in the twelve months to January 2025.
Before anything else: what registered weight is on the cab card? In Texas that number is one of three limbs in the definition that decides whether Chapter 643 registration is owed, and it is the only one you chose rather than measured.
Send the registered weight, the gross weight rating of the power unit and the trailer separately, and the heaviest actual gross weight the combination runs at. Those four numbers settle which side of the Texas line the operation sits on before any coverage question is reached.
Tex. Transp. Code § 643.051 is two subsections and they are drawn on completely different principles. Subsection (a): “A motor carrier may not operate a commercial motor vehicle, as defined by Section 548.001, on a road or highway of this state unless the carrier registers with the department under this subchapter.” Subsection (b): “A motor carrier may not operate a vehicle, regardless of size of the vehicle, to transport household goods for compensation unless the carrier registers with the department under this subchapter.”
So general freight is gated by a definition, and household goods is gated by nothing at all. The phrase “regardless of size of the vehicle” appears once in the subchapter, and it is written for movers. That single contrast is what resolves whether Texas is a weight state for this work, and it resolves it against the no-floor reading.
The definition doing the work is Tex. Transp. Code § 548.001(1): “‘Commercial motor vehicle’ means a self-propelled or towed vehicle, other than a farm vehicle with a gross weight, registered weight, or gross weight rating of less than 48,000 pounds, that is used on a public highway to transport passengers or cargo if: (A) the vehicle … or combination of vehicles has a gross weight, registered weight, or gross weight rating of more than 26,000 pounds; (B) the vehicle … is designed or used to transport more than 15 passengers, including the driver; or (C) the vehicle is used to transport hazardous materials in a quantity requiring placarding by a regulation issued under the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.”
Two words in limb (A) do most of the work for this equipment. The first is “combination” — the test is applied to the assembled unit, so the trailer is inside the arithmetic and a power unit that clears the line alone is not the question. The second is “or”, used twice: the limbs are alternatives, and satisfying any one of the three puts the combination inside the definition.
The identifier that follows is worth knowing about because it is what a trooper and a shipper both look for. Section 643.064 of the same chapter concerns United States Department of Transportation numbers, and the registration itself is administered by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, which the chapter simply calls “the department” at § 643.001(1). Chapter 643 also contains the enforcement apparatus — administrative penalties at § 643.251, administrative sanctions at § 643.252, offenses and penalties at § 643.253, inspection of documents at § 643.254 and injunctive relief at § 643.255 — so the registration is a live compliance object rather than a one-time filing.
Most weight tests in this series measure something. Texas measures two things and reads a third off a document.
Gross weight is what the combination actually weighs on a given day, loaded as it is loaded. Gross weight rating is what the manufacturer says the equipment is built to carry. Registered weight is neither: it is the weight class declared when the vehicle was registered, sitting on the registration receipt and the cab card, unchanged by whether the trailer is loaded or empty and unchanged by what the manufacturer thought.
Because the three limbs are alternatives, the highest of them controls in practice. A combination whose actual gross weight never exceeds 24,000 pounds and whose rating is 25,500 is still inside § 548.001(1)(A) if it is registered at 30,000. Nothing about that operation changed on the day it crossed the line, and nothing about the truck will tell an operator it has.
The direction of the error is what makes this expensive rather than merely interesting. Registering high is the cautious instinct — it buys headroom against an overweight citation, it accommodates the one heavy load a quarter, and it costs a modest amount more. In Texas that same cautious instinct is what pulls a light combination into Chapter 643 registration and into the safety regime that keys off the same definition. The operator paid for headroom and bought a regulatory class.
The corollary is equally practical: the registered weight is a number an operator can review. Unlike a manufacturer’s rating, it is a declaration that can be re-examined at renewal against what the operation actually does. That review is a compliance decision with real consequences on both sides — registering down forecloses the heavier load — and it should be made deliberately rather than inherited from whatever was chosen when the truck was bought.
One further piece of the same definition deserves a note because it shows Texas using all three measures elsewhere. The farm-vehicle exclusion in the chapeau is written as “other than a farm vehicle with a gross weight, registered weight, or gross weight rating of less than 48,000 pounds”. The same triple appears, at a different figure, for a different class. Texas is consistent about the three measures; it is the number that moves.
The Texas Department of Public Safety adopts the federal safety regulations in 37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11, and its applicability test is not the same test as § 548.001’s.
Section 4.11(c)(1)(A) applies the federal regulations to “a vehicle or combination of vehicles with an actual gross weight or a gross weight rating in excess of 26,000 pounds when operating intrastate.” Two measures — actual gross weight and gross weight rating. Registered weight does not appear.
That is a real difference rather than a drafting variant, and it produces a configuration that exists in the wild. A combination registered at 30,000 pounds, rated at 25,500 and never loaded past 24,000 is inside § 548.001(1)(A) and therefore owes Chapter 643 registration, while sitting outside the § 4.11(c)(1)(A) applicability test for the safety regulations on those two measures. The registration duty and the safety duty are not one duty, and reading either instrument alone gives an answer that is right about one of them.
Section 4.11 also imports the § 548.001 definition for its own vocabulary, which is why the two are easy to conflate. Subsection (b)(8) provides: “Commercial motor vehicle--Has the meaning assigned by Texas Transportation Code, §548.001(1) if operated intrastate; commercial motor vehicle has the meaning assigned by Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, §390.5 if operated interstate.” The definition is shared; the applicability test in subsection (c) is not.
The rule carries one more piece of drafting that changes what every citation in it points at. Subsection (b)(3) redefines a term of art: “Interstate or foreign commerce--All movements by motor vehicle, both interstate and intrastate, over the streets and highways of this state.” Wherever the adopted federal text conditions something on interstate or foreign commerce, that phrase has been redefined inside this subchapter to include intrastate movement. The adoption widens while the applicability gate in subsection (c) narrows, and both operations are happening in the same rule.
Two further provisions in § 4.11 reach this operator directly. Subsection (c)(4) puts a ceiling on the medical certificate: one issued under the federal examination sections “shall expire on the date indicated by the medical examiner; however, no such medical examination certificate shall be valid for more than two years from the date of issuance.” And subsection (c)(5) preserves employer discretion: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit an employer from requiring and enforcing more stringent requirements relating to safety of operation and employee health and safety.”
Send the registered weight from the cab card, the gross weight rating of the power unit and trailer, the heaviest actual gross weight the combination runs at, and whether a Chapter 643 registration is already in place. Those four answers decide which Texas instruments are live before any coverage wording is discussed.
Texas does not run a separate intrastate operating-authority proceeding for property carriers. It runs a registration, and then it borrows a federal enforcement mechanism to police it.
37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11(c)(2) makes the substitution explicit. The federal out-of-service provision for operating without authority is applied “to motor carriers operating exclusively in intrastate commerce and to the intrastate operations of interstate motor carriers that have not been federally preempted”, and then: “The term ‘operating authority’ as used in Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, §392.9a, for the motor carriers described in this paragraph, shall mean compliance with the registration requirements found in Texas Transportation Code, Chapter 643.”
The consequence of failing that check is the sharpest single provision on this page. The same paragraph continues: “For purposes of enforcement of this paragraph, peace officers certified to enforce this chapter, shall verify that a motor carrier is not registered, as required in Texas Transportation Code, Chapter 643, before placing a motor carrier out-of-service. Motor carriers placed out-of-service under Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, §392.9a may request a review under §4.18 of this title (relating to Intrastate Operating Authority Out-of-Service Review). All costs associated with the towing and storage of a vehicle and load declared out-of-service under this paragraph shall be the responsibility of the motor carrier and not the department or the State of Texas.”
Read that in the language of a claim rather than of compliance. An unregistered carrier stopped mid-load is not fined and released. The vehicle and the load are placed out of service, the carrier pays for the tow and the storage, and the freight sits until the review runs. On this class — where the entire commercial proposition is that the load arrives inside a window — that is an operational loss that has nothing to do with any insurance policy, and it is a loss the state has expressly assigned to the carrier by rule.
The safeguards written around it are worth naming because they are the operator’s recourse. The officer must be certified to enforce the chapter, must verify non-registration before acting rather than after, and a review route exists under § 4.18. None of that helps a load already on a hook.
The registration itself carries a modest and knowable set of formalities: application at § 643.052, filing at § 643.053, department approval and denial at § 643.054, supplemental registration at § 643.056, additional vehicles and fees at § 643.057, renewal at § 643.058, reregistration at § 643.0585 and cab cards at § 643.059. The chapter reads as a registry, not as a licensing tribunal.
Before accepting that the definition governs, it is worth reading what Texas takes out of Chapter 643 entirely. Tex. Transp. Code § 643.002 opens “This chapter does not apply to” and then lists seven items, all read in full on September 1, 2026.
They are: motor carrier operations exempt from registration by the federal Unified Carrier Registration Act, or a vehicle registered under the single state registration system when operating exclusively in interstate or international commerce; a motor vehicle registered as a cotton vehicle under § 504.505; a motor vehicle the department by rule exempts because it is subject to comparable registration and a comparable safety program administered by another governmental entity; a vehicle used to transport passengers operated by an entity whose primary function is not transporting passengers, such as one operated by a hotel, day-care center, school, nursing home or similar organization; a vehicle operating under four named sections of the Alcoholic Beverage Code concerning the transport of liquor and wine; a vehicle operated by a governmental entity; and a tow truck as defined by § 2308.002 of the Occupations Code.
Not one is a weight, and not one reaches general freight carried for hire by a private business. The third limb is the only one with any theoretical reach — a department rule exempting a vehicle already subject to comparable registration and a comparable safety program run by another governmental entity — and it is a rulemaking hook rather than a self-executing exemption.
The first limb is the one most likely to be misread by an operator who runs some interstate work. It exempts operations exempt from registration under the federal unified system, and vehicles registered under the single state registration system, when operating exclusively in interstate or international commerce. The word doing the work is “exclusively”. A carrier that runs interstate and also takes intrastate Texas loads is not inside that limb for the intrastate loads.
The tow-truck exclusion is worth flagging for a different reason: it is the reason a Texas towing operation and a Texas hot shot operation sit under different chapters despite superficially similar equipment. Recovery work is carved out of Chapter 643 by name; expedited freight is not carved out of anything.
Texas requires proof of insurance as a condition of the registration, and the operative rule states in one sentence both what it covers and what it does not.
43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) provides: “A motor carrier must file proof of automobile liability insurance with the department on a form acceptable to the director for each vehicle required to be registered under this subchapter. The motor carrier shall carry and maintain automobile liability insurance that is combined single limit liability for bodily injury to or death of an individual per occurrence, and loss or damage to property (excluding cargo) per occurrence.”
The parenthesis is not boilerplate. A Texas intrastate general-freight carrier’s mandatory filing, by the express words of the rule that mandates it, does not reach the freight on the deck — and Texas imposes no substitute requirement for general freight anywhere in the subchapter. The filing satisfies the state and leaves the load uncovered by anything the state asked for.
The rule adds two administrative conditions worth knowing. The department may reject proof “if it is provided in a format that includes information beyond what is required”, which makes the certificate format itself a live failure mode rather than a formality. And the filing is per vehicle required to be registered, which means the equipment schedule and the filing move together.
Cargo insurance appears in § 218.16 only for movers. Subsection (b)(1) sets “$5,000 for loss or damage to a single shipper’s cargo carried on any one motor vehicle”, and (b)(2) sets “$10,000 for aggregate loss or damage to multiple shippers’ cargo carried on any one motor vehicle”, adding that where multiple shippers sustain damage and the aggregate exceeds the cargo insurance in force, “the insurance company shall prorate the benefits among the shippers in relationship to the damage incurred by each shipper.” Note the unit of account: the aggregate is per vehicle, not per occurrence.
The statutory twin sits at Tex. Transp. Code § 643.101(c) and names no figure at all: a carrier required to register that transports household goods “shall maintain cargo insurance in the amount required for a motor carrier transporting household goods under federal law.” The practical answer is unaffected, because the rule states the figures on its own face — but a reader chasing the statute into the federal code is chasing a pointer rather than a number, and this page does not import federal figures to fill it.
The same subchapter carries a requirement operators outside Texas often have not met. Section 218.16(c) provides that a motor carrier required to register “and whose primary business is transportation for compensation or hire between two or more municipalities shall provide workers’ compensation for all its employees or accidental insurance coverage” in stated amounts: $300,000 for medical expenses for at least 104 weeks, $100,000 for accidental death and dismemberment, 70 percent of pre-injury income for not less than 104 weeks when compensating for loss of income, and a maximum weekly benefit of $500. Texas is generally a state where workers’ compensation is elective; for this class of carrier it is a registration condition with a named alternative.
One figure on this page is declared missing rather than estimated, and the declaration is deliberate.
43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) sets the minimum automobile liability levels in a table, and the served rule delivers that table as an attached graphic rather than as text. It could not be read at source on September 1, 2026. No Texas minimum liability figure is stated anywhere on this page as a result, and none should be inferred from the mechanism described below.
What can be stated is how the number is arrived at, because that part is in the text. The same subsection provides: “However, a motor carrier that is required to register with the department under Transportation Code, Chapter 643 and operates a foreign commercial motor vehicle must comply with the minimum level of financial responsibility in 49 C.F.R. Part 387 for such vehicle. The department adopts by reference 49 C.F.R. Part 387 regarding the required level of financial responsibility, including any amendments that became effective through July 1, 2024.”
And the statute caps the department’s discretion. Tex. Transp. Code § 643.101(a) requires a carrier registered under the subchapter to “maintain liability insurance in an amount set by the department for each vehicle requiring registration the carrier operates”, and § 643.101(b) provides that, with an exception for certain school buses, “the department by rule may set the amount of liability insurance required at an amount that does not exceed the amount required for a motor carrier under a federal regulation adopted under 49 U.S.C. Section 13906(a)(1). In setting the amount the department shall consider: (1) the class and size of the vehicle; and (2) the persons or cargo being transported.”
So the shape of the answer is knowable even where the figure is not: the department sets it by rule, it is set per vehicle requiring registration, it is capped at the federal level rather than free to exceed it, and the department is directed by statute to set it with reference to vehicle class and size and to what is being carried. An operator should read the current table rather than take a figure from any secondary source, this page included.
One eligibility rule around the policy is stated in the statute and does bear on placement. Section 643.101(e) provides that unless state law permits self-insurance, insurance required for a commercial motor vehicle must come either from an insurer authorized to do business in Texas “whose aggregate net risk, after reinsurance, under any one insurance policy is not in excess of 10 percent of the insurer’s policyholders’ surplus”, or from an insurer meeting the eligibility requirements of a surplus lines insurer under Chapter 981 of the Insurance Code — and that an insurer complying with the subsection “shall be deemed to be in compliance with any rating or financial criteria established for motor carriers by any political subdivision of the state.” Self-insurance itself has its own route at § 643.102 and at § 218.16(d).
Texas freezes the safety text it adopts, and the freeze date is stated in the first sentence of the adoption.
37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11(a) provides: “The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety incorporates, by reference, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 40, 380, 382, 385 - 387, 390 - 393, and 395 - 397 including all interpretations thereto, as amended through September 1, 2022. All other references in this subchapter to the Code of Federal Regulations also refer to amendments and interpretations issued through September 1, 2022.”
The second sentence is the one worth pausing on. It does not merely freeze the adopted parts; it freezes every reference to the Code of Federal Regulations anywhere in the subchapter. Where subchapter B points at a federal definition, a federal form or a federal threshold, the version it points at is the September 1, 2022 version, unless a different rule in the subchapter says otherwise.
That produces a genuine two-clock situation on the insurance side, because 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) adopts the federal financial-responsibility part “including any amendments that became effective through July 1, 2024.” Two Texas agencies, two adoptions of overlapping federal material, two dates almost two years apart. Neither is wrong and neither controls the other.
The insurance rule’s own amendment history shows the pace on that side. The currency block records the section as adopted effective February 4, 2010, amended effective March 12, 2015, amended effective June 1, 2024 and amended again effective January 2, 2025. Two amendments inside eight months is a rule that is being actively worked on, which is the strongest argument for reading the served table rather than any summary of it.
The adoption clause also states its own purposes, and they read as a checklist of what the regime is for: that a commercial motor vehicle is safely maintained, equipped, loaded and operated; that responsibilities imposed on the operator do not impair the ability to operate safely; that the operator’s physical condition enables safe operation; that operators are qualified by training and experience; and that the minimum levels of financial responsibility for carriers of property or passengers operating in interstate, foreign or intrastate commerce are maintained. The last of those names intrastate commerce expressly, which is the mechanism by which any of this reaches a carrier that never leaves Texas.
No Texas instrument sets a price and none can be quoted sight-unseen. The useful thing to publish is the sequence a Texas file gets read in, because that sequence is knowable even when the number is not.
The registered weight is the first thing, and Texas is one of the few states where it is a regulatory input rather than a fee input. It decides, alongside actual gross weight and rating, whether Chapter 643 registration is owed at all, and therefore whether the filing, the workers’ compensation condition and the out-of-service exposure are live. An operation that has never checked its cab card against § 548.001 has not established which side of the line it is on.
Registration status itself is the second, and it is close to binary. A carrier with a current Chapter 643 registration, a filed and accepted proof of insurance and no lapse reads differently from one that has been taking Texas intrastate loads without one — and the second is a compliance question before it is a pricing question, because of what § 4.11(c)(2) authorizes at the roadside.
Gross combination weight rating and the heaviest actual gross weight come next, and they do a different job here than in most states: they decide whether the safety regime applies, since § 4.11(c)(1)(A) tests only those two measures. A fleet whose heaviest configuration is genuinely under the line on both is answering a narrower set of questions than its registration suggests.
Commodity does all the work on cargo here, because the state has vacated the field for general freight. The mandatory filing writes cargo out by name and Texas substitutes nothing, so whatever limit exists is a limit somebody signed. This equipment tends to carry freight worth far more per pound than its weight implies, because the loads that justify paying for speed are usually the ones replacing something that has failed. A limit written for ordinary tonnage is exactly the wrong limit for that.
Fourth comes geography. Every rule described above is the intrastate answer; a load into Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma or New Mexico is a different posture for that load, and the § 643.002(1) exemption for operations exclusively in interstate commerce does not help a carrier that also runs Texas intrastate freight. Radius is honestly a distribution, and the distribution is what gets priced.
The workers’ compensation question is the fifth, and it is more consequential in Texas than in most states because Texas is a state where coverage is generally elective. Section 218.16(c) makes it, or the named accidental-insurance alternative, a condition of registration for a carrier whose primary business is transportation for hire between two or more municipalities. Which of the two an operation carries, and whether the amounts match the rule, is a factual question with a documented answer.
Last comes the paperwork nobody photographs. Running under your own registration or someone else’s decides whose limits answer first. A shipper agreement that demands additional-insured status, primary and non-contributory wording, or a waiver of subrogation reshapes the program without touching a bolt on the equipment — and those demands are usually signed before anyone reads them.
Texas law does not know this trade by name. Nothing read for this page defines it, assigns it a registration class, gives it a filing table of its own, or mandates an endorsement for it. The vocabulary the business uses about itself is absent from every instrument that reaches it.
That is not a research gap; it is how Texas regulates. The state reaches this work through a vehicle-inspection definition written in 1995 and amended six times since, borrowed into a registration chapter written in 1997, and applied by a safety rule that adopts federal text and then redefines two of its terms. Three instruments, three drafting purposes, and no index that assembles them for a reader.
What was read, and what was not, is worth stating. Chapter 643 subchapter C, the insurance subchapter, was read across §§ 643.101 and 643.103 with the chapter’s own section list enumerated; § 643.001, § 643.002 and § 643.051 were read in full on September 1, 2026; § 548.001 was read in full. The operative insurance rule, 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16, was read across all eight subsections — automobile liability, cargo, workers’ compensation, self-insurance qualification, filing proof, cancellation, replacement filing and insolvency — except for the attached graphic carrying the liability table, which is declared unread above.
One host note for anyone re-running this. The Texas Secretary of State’s administrative code reader at texreg.sos.state.tx.us returns HTTP 200 with a page that says only “This Site Has Moved”, redirecting to a portal that serves no rule text to a plain fetch. The rule text on this page was read at Cornell’s Legal Information Institute and the statutes at texas.public.law, whose source lines cite the Texas Legislature’s own statute pages. An HTTP 200 from the official host would have proved nothing.
One closing discipline. Where Texas writes a number, this page cites it and dates it. Where Texas writes no number — as with what any of this actually costs to buy — the page says so and stops, because a plausible invention would do more damage than an admitted gap.
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 Texas 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 Texas 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.
It depends on a three-limb definition rather than on a scale. Tex. Transp. Code § 643.051(a) requires registration by a motor carrier operating a commercial motor vehicle as defined by § 548.001, and § 548.001(1)(A) reaches a vehicle or combination with a gross weight, registered weight, or gross weight rating of more than 26,000 pounds. The limbs are alternatives, so any one of the three puts the combination inside. Household goods is the exception: § 643.051(b) requires registration “regardless of size of the vehicle” for that commodity only.
It is the weight class declared when the vehicle was registered, printed on the registration and the cab card. It is not a measurement — it does not change when the trailer is loaded and it is not the manufacturer’s rating. Texas names it as one of the three alternative limbs in § 548.001(1)(A), so a combination that never weighs more than 24,000 pounds and is rated below the line can still be inside the definition because of the number chosen at registration. Registering high for headroom is the common way operators end up there without noticing.
No. Tex. Transp. Code § 548.001(1)(A) tests gross weight, registered weight or gross weight rating. 37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11(c)(1)(A) applies the federal safety regulations to a vehicle or combination “with an actual gross weight or a gross weight rating in excess of 26,000 pounds when operating intrastate” — two measures, and registered weight is not among them. A combination can therefore owe Chapter 643 registration while sitting outside the safety applicability test, and neither instrument reconciles the two.
37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11(c)(2) makes “operating authority” in the federal out-of-service provision mean compliance with Chapter 643 registration for intrastate carriers. A certified peace officer must verify that the carrier is not registered before placing it out of service. The same paragraph provides that all costs associated with the towing and storage of a vehicle and load declared out of service “shall be the responsibility of the motor carrier and not the department or the State of Texas.” A review route exists under § 4.18 of the same title.
No, and the rule says so in the sentence that requires it. 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) requires automobile liability that is combined single limit for bodily injury or death per occurrence “and loss or damage to property (excluding cargo) per occurrence.” Cargo insurance appears in the section only for household goods carriers, at $5,000 for a single shipper’s cargo on any one motor vehicle and $10,000 in the aggregate for multiple shippers on any one motor vehicle. Texas imposes no cargo requirement on general freight, which leaves the limit to the shipper or broker contract.
For a registered carrier whose primary business is transportation for compensation or hire between two or more municipalities, 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(c) requires workers’ compensation for all employees, or accidental insurance coverage of at least $300,000 for medical expenses for at least 104 weeks, $100,000 for accidental death and dismemberment, 70 percent of pre-injury income for not less than 104 weeks when compensating for lost income, and a $500 maximum weekly benefit. Texas is generally an elective state for workers’ compensation, which is why this registration condition surprises people.
The version as amended through September 1, 2022. 37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.11(a) incorporates the listed federal parts as amended through that date, and adds that all other references to the Code of Federal Regulations in the subchapter also refer to amendments and interpretations issued through the same date. Separately, 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) adopts the federal financial-responsibility part including amendments effective through July 1, 2024 — two Texas agencies, two dates, nearly two years apart.
No published figure exists, and the one state number that would belong in this answer could not be read. The minimum liability table in 43 Tex. Admin. Code § 218.16(a) is served as an attached graphic and could not be read at source for this page, so no Texas figure is stated here — read the current rule rather than a summary. What moves the price is registered weight against the 26,000-pound definition, registration and filing status, the heaviest rating and actual gross weight, commodity mix and the value of the heaviest load, radius as a distribution, the workers’ compensation position, and the contract terms flowing down from shippers.
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.
