Motor carrier classes by state
Illinois prices a new for-hire carrier out of a rule Part where nine of the eleven sections have been repealed — and the two that survived carry every dollar figure the Commission still collects.
A motor carrier of property that starts in Illinois is starting inside the Illinois Commerce Commission’s jurisdiction by default. 625 ILCS 5/18c-4101 sets the reach in one sentence: “Except as provided in Section 18c-4102 of this Chapter, the jurisdiction of the Commission shall extend to all motor carriers of property operating within the State of Illinois.” That is a default-in rule with a carved-out list, not a threshold, and it means the first Illinois question a new venture answers is not how heavy the truck is.
What follows on this page is the set of Illinois obligations that arrive with the business rather than with the load: what the Secretary of State charges to bring the company into existence and what it charges every year afterwards, what the Commission charges to open a file and what it charges per vehicle, which of those two annual charges an interstate registration switches off, and what the Commission has said in writing about how long any of it takes. Every figure below was read at the source on September 3, 2026, and each carries the date its own instrument bears.
The enforcement side — what an officer may cite, what a carrier may present at hearing as a defense, and the Commission’s own filed minimums — is carried on the Illinois hot shot cell and is not repeated here.
Illinois is a two-credential state with one live fee rule, and the sequence of charges is not obvious from any single document. A new venture that reads only the application form will miss the annual per-vehicle charge; a new venture that reads only the fee rule will miss the credential it buys.
Send the entity type you filed with the Secretary of State, the number of power units you expect to run in the first year, and whether any load will cross a state line. Those three answers settle which Illinois charges reach you before any coverage question is asked.
92 Ill. Adm. Code Part 1205 is titled FEES and sits in Subchapter a, Commercial Transportation Generally, of the Illinois Commerce Commission’s chapter of Title 92. Reading the Part’s section list before reading any section is worth doing, because the list is mostly obituary. 1205.20 Late-Filing Fees is marked (Repealed). So are 1205.100 Intrastate Motor Carriers of Property, 1205.110 Interstate Motor Carriers of Property, 1205.115 Ordering Fees, 1205.200 Gross Receipts Taxes for Motor Carriers of Passengers, 1205.210 Gross Receipts Taxes for Rail Carriers, 1205.220 Gross Receipts Taxes for Common Carrier Pipelines, 1205.300 Payment of Fees, and 1205.400 Temporary Filing Fees, Annual Vehicle Fees and Ordering Fees.
That leaves 1205.10, Filing and Annual Fees, holding the whole live schedule. Its text opens by naming who it does not cover — “Filing and application fees for other than household goods carriers and relocation towers shall be as follows” — and then lists seven charges. The source note at the foot of the section reads “Amended at 25 Ill. Reg. 14845, effective November 1, 2001.” That date is the currency of every Illinois Commission fee quoted anywhere on this page, and it is more than twenty-four years old.
The repeals matter beyond tidiness. A heading is not an operative rule, and 1205.115 is the demonstration: a section called Ordering Fees still appears in the Part list, still has a number, and still returns a document when fetched — and the document says (Repealed). 1205.400 goes further and dates it, carrying the source line “Automatically repealed effective January 1, 1998.” An adviser who searched the Part for “annual vehicle fees,” landed on 1205.400 by its title and quoted from the heading would be quoting something that stopped operating twenty-eight years ago.
What survives is short enough to read as a whole, and reading it as a whole is how the two annual charges become visible. They are the last two rows, and neither is mentioned on the front of the application form.
805 ILCS 180/50-10 is the Limited Liability Company Act’s own fee section, and subsection (b)(1) does something a fee table normally does not: it sets a price and then immediately overrides it for one class of company. The text reads “Filing articles of organization (domestic), application for admission (foreign), and restated articles of organization (domestic), $150. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the fee for filing articles of organization (domestic), application for admission (foreign), and restated articles of organization (domestic) in connection with a limited liability company with a series or the ability to establish a series pursuant to Section 37-40 of this Act is $400.”
The trigger is not whether the company has actually established a series. It is whether the company has a series “or the ability to establish a series.” An operating agreement drafted from a template that leaves the series machinery switched on is, on the face of the statute, a $400 filing rather than a $150 one — and the difference is decided at organization, not later.
The same design reappears at the annual report. Subsection (b)(11) reads “Filing an annual report of a limited liability company or foreign limited liability company, $75, if filed as required by this Act, plus a penalty if delinquent. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the fee for filing an annual report of a limited liability company or foreign limited liability company is $75 plus $50 for each series for which a certificate of designation has been filed pursuant to Section 37-40 of this Act and is in effect on the last day of the third month preceding the company’s anniversary month, plus a penalty if delinquent.” Here the surcharge attaches to designations actually filed and actually in effect on a stated measuring date, not to the mere ability.
The rest of the schedule is worth knowing because a first year of trading touches several rows of it. Amendments, domestic or foreign, are $50. A certificate of designation for a series is $50. Reinstatement of a limited liability company is $200 — nearly three times the annual report it replaces. Filing a statement of change of address of registered office or change of registered agent, or both, or a statement of correction, is $25. A statement of termination or application for withdrawal is $5, and so is “filing any other document.” The section’s source line carries three public acts, the most recent being P.A. 102-49, effective January 1, 2022.
None of these is a Commission charge. They are Secretary of State charges, and they are the only Illinois formation figures stated on this page, because the Secretary of State’s own web host would not answer this environment at all. What the statute prices is verifiable; what the agency publishes about processing was not readable, and no turnaround is asserted here.
805 ILCS 180/50-1(b) sets the filing window by reference to the company’s own anniversary rather than to a common date: the annual report “together with all fees and charges prescribed by this Act, shall be delivered to the Secretary of State within 60 days immediately preceding the first day of the anniversary month.” A carrier organized in March files in a different window from one organized in September, and there is no statewide deadline to remember.
The subsection then supplies a repair provision that is easy to miss and materially useful. If the Secretary of State finds the report does not conform and returns it for correction, “the penalties prescribed for failure to file the report within the time provided shall not apply if the report is corrected to conform to the requirements of this Act and returned to the Secretary of State within 60 days of the original due date of the report.” A rejected report is not automatically a delinquent one; a rejected report left uncorrected past sixty days is.
805 ILCS 180/50-15 supplies the consequence. The Secretary of State “shall declare” a company delinquent and not in good standing if it has failed to file the annual report and pay the fee before the first day of the anniversary month, or if it has “failed to appoint and maintain a registered agent in Illinois within 60 days of notification of the Secretary of State by the resigning registered agent.” The penalty for the first is “a penalty of $100 plus $100 for each year or fraction thereof beginning with the second year of delinquency until returned to good standing or until reinstatement is effected.”
Two further consequences in that section bite harder than the money for a business that is trying to grow. The Secretary of State “shall not file any additional documents, amendments, reports, or other papers” for a delinquent company until the delinquency is satisfied — so a delinquent carrier cannot file the amendment, the assumed-name registration or the change of agent it may need in order to trade. And on inquiry from any party, the Secretary of State “may show the limited liability company as not in good standing,” which is the state of the record a broker, a shipper or a lender will see. The section carries P.A. 100-753, effective January 1, 2019.
The registered agent duty itself sits at 805 ILCS 180/1-35: each domestic and foreign limited liability company “shall continuously maintain in this State a registered agent and registered office, which agent must be an individual resident of this State or other person authorized to transact business in this State.” The resignation machinery in the same section is where the sixty-day clock in 50-15 comes from — a resigning agent files notice with the Secretary of State, mails a copy to the company at its principal office at least ten days before filing, and states an effective date “which shall not be sooner than 30 days after the date of filing.” Subsection (d) then closes it: “A new registered agent must be placed on record within 60 days after a registered agent’s notice of resignation under this Section.” The section carries P.A. 96-988, effective July 2, 2010.
The Illinois numbers that decide a new venture’s first year are spread across a 2001 fee rule, a 2021 form and a 2022 guidance document. They do not contradict each other, but no one of them is complete.
Tell us your entity type, your unit count and whether any load crosses a state line, and we will tell you which Illinois charges and filings actually reach you.
PCC-1, the Application for Public Carrier Certificate, carries its own insurance table rather than referring the applicant elsewhere, and Part 2A begins with a gate rather than a commodity list. The applicant is asked to mark yes or no to a single statement — “Motor carrier will use freight vehicles with gross vehicle weight rating over 10,000 pounds (GVWR)” — and then instructed: “If you answered NO complete Section 1 below fully. If you answered YES complete Section 2 below fully.”
That gate is the most consequential thing on the form for a small new venture, because the two sections do not price the same freight the same way. Section 1, reached by answering no, has two rows. Any quantity of Class A or B explosives, any quantity of poison gas (Poison A), or highway route controlled quantity radioactive materials as defined in 49 C.F.R. § 173.455 requires $5,000,000. Everything else — the row is written as “Commodities other than” that list — requires $300,000.
Section 2, reached by answering yes, is the familiar four-category structure plus a general row. Property (non-hazardous) requires $750,000. Category B, which covers hazardous substances as defined in 49 C.F.R. § 171.8 carried in cargo tanks, portable tanks or hopper-type vehicles with capacities in excess of 3,500 water gallons, or in bulk Class A or B explosives, poison gas (Poison A), liquefied compressed gas or compressed gas, or highway route controlled quantity radioactive materials, requires $5,000,000. Category C — oil listed in 49 C.F.R. § 172.101, hazardous waste, hazardous materials and hazardous substances defined in 49 C.F.R. § 171.8 and listed in 49 C.F.R. § 172.101 but not mentioned in Category B or D — requires $1,000,000. Category D repeats the explosives, poison gas and highway route controlled quantity class at $5,000,000.
So an Illinois for-hire operation built on vehicles rated at or below 10,000 pounds GVWR carrying ordinary freight is answering the form in the $300,000 column, not the $750,000 one. That is a state application-form threshold expressed in gross vehicle weight rating, and it is the opposite of the reading most new operators arrive with. It is also a rating test rather than a loaded-weight test, which means it is settled by the manufacturer’s plate on the door jamb and not by what happens on a scale.
Who submits the paper is set out in the form’s own required-documents checklist, and the answer is split. Form E, described as “Proof of Liability and Property Damage Insurance to be filed by insurance company authorized to provide insurance in the State of Illinois,” is an insurer filing. Form H, Proof of Cargo Insurance, carries the same requirement — “Form H must be filed by insurance company authorized to provide insurance in the State of Illinois.” The one instrument the applicant may file itself is the alternative to Form H: the checklist states that the “Cargo Insurance Waiver Affidavit may be filed by the Applicant.” The cargo side of that choice, and the Commission’s own filed minimums, are worked through on the Illinois hot shot cell.
The form carries the stamp “PCC-1 (Revised 10/27/2021” at the foot of each page, and the fee schedule in its instructions matches 1205.10(a): “$50.00 Initial Application; $50.00 Reinstatement of Revoked PCC; $50.00 Reinstatement of PCC after temporary suspension expired; No Fee Reinstatement of PCC during temporary suspension period.” The last row is a genuine zero rather than a blank, and the section below on suspension explains what it buys.
The second Illinois credential is the cab card, and it is priced per vehicle per year rather than per filing. 625 ILCS 5/18c-4601(1)(a) states the duty: “Each motor vehicle used in for-hire transportation upon the public roads of this State shall carry a current cab card together with an identifier issued by or under authority of the Commission. If the carrier is an intrastate motor carrier of property, the prescribed intrastate cab card and identifier shall be required; if the carrier is an interstate motor carrier of property, the prescribed interstate cab card and identifier shall be required.” There is no weight qualifier in that sentence; the duty attaches to the use.
The price comes from the fee rule rather than the statute, and the research index for this state did not carry it. 92 Ill. Adm. Code 1205.10(f) sets an “Annual fee for each vehicle operated under a Public Carrier Certificate” of $5. The Commission’s own guidance repeats it and adds the cadence: “Cab cards must be purchased annually for each cab or unit you plan to utilize to transport goods for-hire. The current fee for cab cards is $5 for each vehicle operated under a Public Carrier Certificate. 92 Ill.Adm.Code § 1205.10(f).”
The timing is stated twice, in two instruments, and the two do not say quite the same thing. The Commission’s guidance is operational: “Cab cards must be purchased prior to January 1 of the new year. Typically, the Illinois Commerce Commission opens cab card purchasing in October preceding the beginning of that year.” The statute is a carrying rule with a wider frame — 18c-4601(1)(c) provides that cab cards and identifiers “shall be executed, carried, and presented no earlier than December 1 of the calendar year preceding the calendar year for which fees are owing, and no later than February 1 of the calendar year for which fees are owing, unless otherwise provided in Commission regulations and orders.” The statute governs when the document is executed, carried and shown; the guidance governs when the carrier is told to buy it. The closing clause of the statute defers to Commission regulations and orders, so the operational instruction is not in conflict with it. The section carries P.A. 102-538, effective August 20, 2021.
A third document travels with the other two and is painted rather than carried. 625 ILCS 5/18c-4701(1) provides that no intrastate carrier shall operate a motor vehicle on the public roads of the State “unless there is painted or affixed to both sides of the cab or power unit, in accordance with such specifications as the Commission may prescribe, the trade name of the carrier as it appears on the carrier’s license or the carrier’s recognized logo, together with the license and registration number of the carrier.” The same subsection then relieves an interstate carrier operating intrastate — household goods carriers excepted — of the obligation to paint or affix the intrastate authority number. A carrier that is both is not painting two sets of numbers.
What could not be established for Illinois is the plate and fuel side. The Commission’s guidance gestures at the division of labor without resolving it, stating that in-vehicle documentation duties arise “Beyond the requirements of the Illinois Secretary of State, the Illinois Department of Transportation, and the Illinois Department of Revenue” — three agencies named, none assigned. The Secretary of State host would not answer this environment on any protocol, and no Illinois apportioned-registration or fuel-agreement page was read. This page therefore names no Illinois IRP or IFTA desk, states no Illinois apportioned threshold, and records both as unverified rather than inferring them.
Illinois is a participating state, and the Commission answers the Unified Carrier Registration question itself rather than pointing at a federal page. Its trigger is stated in terms of intent and mixture rather than of vehicle: “If you intend to operate either as an interstate carrier only or both an interstate and an intrastate carrier in a calendar year, you are required to purchase UCR.” A new venture planning a single out-of-state run in its first year answers that question yes.
The Commission does not sell it. It directs the registrant elsewhere — “You can purchase UCR by going onto their website, www.ucr.gov, and following the on-screen instructions” — and it disclaims control of the amount: “The annual fee is set by the UCR Board, and is subject to change year-to-year.” So the Illinois posture is that of a recognizing authority rather than a collecting one, which is why the number is stated in the band above this page and not by the Commission.
The Illinois-specific consequence is a set-off, and it runs in the direction most operators do not expect. Holding one credential switches the other off: “if you also operate as an interstate carrier and are required to purchase Unified Carrier Registration (‘UCR’), you are exempt from the requirement to purchase cab cards from the Illinois Commerce Commission.” The application form states the same rule from the other side, in its required-documents checklist: the intrastate cab card order form is “only required of motor carriers transporting commodities solely in intrastate commerce within the State of Illinois. Motor carriers who also transport commodities in interstate commerce, and as a result have a USDOT Number, must obtain UCR (Unified Carrier Registration), and thus are not required to purchase intrastate cab cards.”
A carrier that keeps all of its freight inside Illinois therefore pays $5 per vehicle per year to the Commission and nothing to the Unified Carrier Registration system. A carrier that crosses a state line once pays the federal registration and nothing per vehicle to the Commission. There is no arrangement in which a for-hire Illinois carrier pays both, and there is none in which it pays neither.
One artefact of that history sits in the live fee rule and is worth naming because it is a dating trap rather than an error. 1205.10(g) still prices an “Annual fee for each vehicle operated in interstate commerce under the Single State Registration Program or as an exempt interstate carrier” at $7. The Single State Registration Program is the arrangement the Unified Carrier Registration system displaced; the Commission’s guidance no longer instructs interstate carriers to buy anything from the Commission, and its answer on cab cards points them to ucr.gov instead. The rule row has not been amended since the schedule’s stamp of November 1, 2001. It is a live row in a live section naming a program the guidance no longer administers — and a reader who priced an interstate fleet from the rule alone would produce a number the Commission does not currently ask for.
The Commission also states the purchase deadline and hedges it in the same breath, and the hedge is load-bearing: “UCR Registration must be purchased prior to January 1 of the upcoming year. Typically, UCR registration for a given registration year opens on the October 1 preceding the beginning of that year. However, this date is subject to change.” Both quotations come from the Commission’s ten-page guidance, stamped Last Revised: November 15, 2022 and read on September 3, 2026.
A large share of new Illinois ventures do not begin by holding authority. They begin leased on to a carrier that already holds it, and Illinois treats that arrangement as a filing rather than a private contract. The Commission’s answer to the question is direct: a person who is not a licensed Illinois intrastate motor carrier may operate under someone else’s intrastate authority “so long as you execute and file an Equipment Lease with the Illinois Commerce Commission.”
The lease has a definition, a prescribed form, and a fee. It is “a written document vesting possession, use, control, and responsibility in the lessee during the periods the vehicle is operated by or for the lessee,” under 92 Ill. Adm. Code § 1360.20. It must be made on the Commission’s own Equipment Lease form, EL-1, under § 1360.45. And it carries a charge the fee rule sets at $15 — the Commission states it as “a filing fee, which is currently set at $15 per equipment lease filing. 92 Ill.Adm.Code § 1205.10(d),” and the rule row reads simply “Equipment lease filing $15.”
Two further rules attach to the arrangement rather than to the paper. The Commission points lessors and lessees at the general leasing requirements and lease terms and conditions at 92 Ill. Adm. Code §§ 1360.30 and 1360.40, so the terms are not open to negotiation in the way a purely commercial lease would be. And 625 ILCS 5/18c-4104(2)(b) supplies a substance-over-form test for whether the document counts: a lease “shall be deemed to be in the form prescribed by the Commission if it contains all provisions called for in the Commission-prescribed lease and does not contain any provisions inconsistent therewith.” A lease that adds a clause cutting against the prescribed terms is not merely unusual; it is outside the deeming provision.
For a new venture the practical shape of this is that leasing on is not a way of deferring the Illinois file. It opens one. There is a filing, a fee, a prescribed form and a set of terms, and the arrangement is visible to the Commission from the moment the EL-1 is lodged.
Illinois is unusual in stating its own limits in writing, and three of those statements change how a new venture should plan. The first is about time. Asked how long it takes to obtain a Public Carrier Certificate, the Commission answers: “Due to numerous factors, the Illinois Commerce Commission cannot provide a concrete timeframe for when you will receive your Public Carrier Certificate. However, you may check the status of any Public Carrier Certificate application by calling the Illinois Commerce Commission’s Transportation Processing Division at 217-782-4654.” There is a status line, and there is no estimate.
The second is about operating in the meantime, and it closes a gap most states leave open. “Your Public Carrier Certificate is not valid until your license is issued by the Illinois Commerce Commission. You are not permitted to operate as a for-hire motor carrier of property in the State of Illinois before or during your application process.” Read alongside the refusal to give a date, those two answers describe a period of unknown length during which the operation is expressly not permitted to run. That is a working-capital fact before it is a regulatory one.
The third is about advice. “No, the Illinois Commerce Commission cannot provide the public legal advice on any matter. Staff can answer questions related to processes at the Illinois Commerce Commission, such as how to apply for authority or how to pay a citation, but they cannot provide any legal advice or opinions related to your operations as a motor carrier.” The same document repeats the point on the question a new venture most wants answered — whether its work is intrastate or interstate — and says only that a reader with any doubt is “strongly encouraged” to seek the advice and counsel of a licensed attorney.
The consequence that most often surprises a founder appears in the enforcement part of the same document, and it turns on the entity chosen back at the Secretary of State. On appearing at a hearing to contest an administrative citation: “If you are an individual or a sole proprietor, you may appear at an Administrative Citation hearing on your own behalf. 83 Ill.Adm.Code § 200.90(b). If your business is a corporation or LLC, you must be represented by an attorney licensed to practice law in the State of Illinois at your own cost. 83 Ill.Adm.Code § 200.90.” The same rule is applied again to formal enforcement proceedings after a rejected settlement offer.
That is a real trade-off, and it is settled at organization. The $150 filing that produces limited liability also produces a rule that the company cannot answer a citation with its own voice. A sole proprietor keeps the right to appear alone and gives up the liability shield. Neither answer is the right one for every operation, but a new venture ought to know that the choice reaches this far before it makes it.
The submission channel is narrow in the same spirit. PCC-1’s instructions state that the completed application and payment go by US Mail, and add: “Please note that FAXED, EMAILED OR OVER-THE-PHONE APPLICATIONS ARE NOT ACCEPTED. If you attempt to submit the application with payment via fax, email or telephone, the application will NOT be processed.” Instruction 5 adds that failure to complete any portion “in full and accurately will result in the application not being processed and the motor carrier receiving a deficiency notice.” An online route exists and is named in the guidance; the paper route has no discretion in it.
The Illinois license has no expiry — “Your Public Carrier Certificate is valid indefinitely, so long as you operate in compliance with the Illinois Commercial Transportation Law and its Administrative Rules” — so the thing that ends it is a lapse rather than a date. The most common lapse for a new venture is insurance, and the statute treats it as urgent. 625 ILCS 5/18c-1704(6)(a) provides that where the violation is a failure to have in effect and file proof of continuous insurance coverage, “the license or registration or both may be suspended by telephonic or telegraphic directive, confirmed by certified or registered mail or personal service, pending final disposition of revocation proceedings.” A suspension can start with a telephone call.
Curing it is free and specific. The Commission states that the certificate “can be un-suspended by filing proof of insurance with the Illinois Commerce Commission,” and answers the fee question directly: “No, as long as your Public Carrier Certificate is suspended, not revoked, you are not required to pay a fee to un-suspend your Public Carrier Certificate.” Operating during the suspension is not an option — the Commission says so twice, for suspension and for revocation, and attaches fines and civil penalties to both.
Revocation runs on a clock that expires whether or not anyone acts. Under 18c-1704(6)(c)(i) the notice must state that unless the Commission receives a written request for hearing or extension of time within 30 days from the date the notice is served, “the person’s license or registration will be revoked by operation of law without further action by the Commission.” Subsection (ii) allows one extension of time “not exceeding 60 days where the extension will not endanger the public.” Subsection (iv) then spells out what silence produces: at expiry, with no compliance and no written request, the person “will be deemed to have waived hearing and the license or registration shall be revoked by operation of law without further action by the Commission as if the Commission has served an order on the date following expiration.” Nobody signs anything. The section carries P.A. 88-415.
Getting back is possible for a year and costs money. The Commission states that a revoked certificate can be reinstated “within one year of revocation by filing an Application for Public Carrier Certificate,” under 92 Ill. Adm. Code § 1236.10, that the underlying condition must be remedied, and that a reinstatement fee is payable — “Currently, that fee is $50. 92 Ill.Adm.Code § 1205.10.” The application form’s own fee schedule matches: $50 for reinstatement of a revoked certificate.
There is also a deliberate pause that costs nothing, and it is the reason for the zero row on the form. A carrier may temporarily suspend its own certificate for up to a year by filing a Temporary Suspension Request Form, may not operate while it is suspended, and — per the form’s fee schedule — pays “No Fee” to reinstate during the temporary suspension period, but $50 to reinstate after it has expired. For a seasonal or a stalled new venture, the difference between coming back inside the year and coming back outside it is the whole fee.
Unified Carrier Registration is federal in structure and collected by the participating states, so the fee is the same wherever a carrier registers and no state sets it. It is changing, and both figures are current for their own period.
For the 2026 registration year, bracket B1 — an exempt or non-exempt motor carrier, motor private carrier or freight forwarder operating zero to two commercial motor vehicles — is $46.00 per entity. From October 1, 2026, for the 2027 registration year and each subsequent year, that bracket is $55.00 per entity, under FMCSA final rule 91 FR 56063, published September 1, 2026. The larger fleet brackets rise on the same date; the full schedule is in the rule rather than restated here.
One trap is worth naming, because no ordinary check catches it. The same rule renumbers the sections: it redesignates the current 49 CFR §367.50 as §367.40 and adds a new §367.50 carrying the 2027 table. Until October 1, 2026 the citation “49 CFR 367.50” names the $46 schedule; from that date the identical citation names the $55 schedule, and the section carries no repeal marker to signal the change. A document citing §367.50 for $46 becomes wrong without being edited.
UCR figures read at the Federal Register on September 2, 2026.
The state minimum is a licensing threshold. The program an operator actually needs is built from these lines:
We write new ventures as a named class rather than as an unpriced version of an established fleet, and we read each account against the state layer the operator actually meets rather than against the federal floor alone. For a Illinois operator that means starting from what the state does and does not require of a carrier with no operating history, separating the credentials the state issues from the ones it merely asks you to hold, and treating the absence of a filing regime as a fact about the submission rather than a gap in it.
If the operation also runs freight under separate authority, the Illinois trucking insurance page covers the state’s broader motor carrier picture, and the new venture trucking insurance page covers the class mechanics that apply wherever the operator runs.
On what the Commission publishes, yes. 625 ILCS 5/18c-4101 extends Commission jurisdiction to all motor carriers of property operating within Illinois except as provided in 18c-4102, and the Commission’s guidance says that generally any person or entity engaged in for-hire transportation of property over the public roads in intrastate commerce must obtain the certificate. The 10,000-pound question on PCC-1 is not a licensing threshold — it decides which insurance column of the application you complete. Read at source on September 3, 2026.
The annual fee is $5 for each vehicle operated under a Public Carrier Certificate, set by 92 Ill. Adm. Code 1205.10(f) — a schedule stamped effective November 1, 2001. Not every carrier buys one: the Commission states that a carrier who also operates as an interstate carrier and is required to purchase Unified Carrier Registration is exempt from the cab-card requirement. Solely intrastate carriers buy cab cards; carriers with any interstate operation do not. Read September 3, 2026.
It declines to say. Its published answer is that “Due to numerous factors, the Illinois Commerce Commission cannot provide a concrete timeframe for when you will receive your Public Carrier Certificate,” and it offers a status telephone line instead. In the same document it states that a carrier is “not permitted to operate as a for-hire motor carrier of property in the State of Illinois before or during your application process.” Both quotations are from the Commission’s guidance stamped Last Revised: November 15, 2022, read September 3, 2026.
Because 805 ILCS 180/50-10(b)(1) sets the higher fee for articles of organization filed “in connection with a limited liability company with a series or the ability to establish a series pursuant to Section 37-40 of this Act.” The trigger is the ability, not the use, so an operating agreement that leaves the series machinery available can put the filing in the $400 column. Separately, the annual report is $75 plus $50 for each series with a certificate of designation in effect on the last day of the third month before the anniversary month. Read at source September 3, 2026.
Under 625 ILCS 5/18c-1704(6)(a) the license may be suspended by telephonic directive pending revocation proceedings. Filing proof of insurance lifts the suspension and the Commission charges no fee to do so. If matters proceed to a revocation notice, 18c-1704(6)(c) gives 30 days to comply or request a hearing, allows one extension of up to 60 days, and provides that at expiry the license is revoked by operation of law without further Commission action. Reinstatement is available within one year for a $50 fee. Read September 3, 2026.
No. The Commission states that an individual or sole proprietor may appear at an administrative citation hearing on their own behalf under 83 Ill. Adm. Code § 200.90(b), but that a corporation or LLC “must be represented by an attorney licensed to practice law in the State of Illinois at your own cost.” The same rule is applied to formal enforcement proceedings after a rejected settlement. It is a consequence of the entity choice made at the Secretary of State, and it is worth pricing in. Read September 3, 2026.
Every figure on this page was read at the source below on September 3, 2026, with the effective date of the version read. Treat each as current as of that date rather than as permanent.
Send the equipment list, the operating radius and the commodity, and tell us the date authority was granted. We will size the program against the first year the operation will actually have rather than against a statutory floor.
