Motor carrier classes by state
North Carolina is the lightest state layer on this network for a general-freight startup and the one that writes its promises down most precisely. Its expedited filing service is not an agency courtesy but a statutory guarantee with a noon cutoff and a rule barring the office from charging a fee it did not disclose first. Its road tax reaches intrastate carriers by its own express terms, which is unusual for an instrument of that shape. And its annual report costs more to file online than on paper, which the agency’s own guidance says is not the case.
A new venture is an authority applicant with no operating history, and most of the first year is federal and identical everywhere. This page is about what North Carolina adds, which for a general-property operation is genuinely little — but the little that exists is precisely drafted and easy to get wrong in the details.
Everything below was read at primary source on September 2, 2026, and every figure carries the date it was read, because one of them changes twenty-nine days later and the federal citation that holds it moves on the same day.
Two things distinguish this state layer. The first is that a good deal of what other states leave to agency practice is written into statute here — the expedited filing tiers, the guarantee attached to them, and the bar on collecting an undisclosed fee are all in the General Statutes rather than on a fee page. The second is a road tax whose scope provision says in terms that it applies to intrastate carriers as well as to interstate ones, which is the opposite of how most instruments of that family are drawn.
Nothing on this page is a sequence, and here that is a stronger statement than usual. For this carrier class North Carolina has no state authority step at all, so there is nothing for the other tasks to be ordered against, and the reading that establishes that was done chapter by chapter rather than inferred from silence.
A North Carolina file is short on state credentials, which changes what an underwriter has to reason from.
Send the equipment, the commodity and whether anything ever runs over dimension, and we will work out which of these reaches you.
North Carolina charges one price to form a limited liability company and does not vary it by how the document arrives, which is worth stating because the recurring filing described further down does vary, and in a direction most people do not expect.
The Secretary of State’s business registration forms index carries the row: “Articles of Organization (PDF) — L-01 • $125.00 • Form used to register a North Carolina Limited Liability Company (LLC)”. The form itself agrees in its own closing note: “Filing fee is $125. This document must be filed with the Secretary of State.” Read September 2, 2026.
There is no online price and no paper price on formation. One document, one fee.
One detail on that index is worth recording because it affects how the filing is actually made rather than what it costs. Several neighbouring rows — the articles used for a conversion, and the equivalent form on the limited partnership side — carry a link to file online. The row for form L-01 does not. A venture planning to form entirely through a browser should confirm the route before budgeting time for it, because the index that lists the form does not offer one for this document.
Sibling figures on the same index, for calibration: an amendment of the articles of organization, form L-17, is $50.00; the articles used with a conversion, forms L-01A and L-01B, are $125.00; and a restatement, form L-16, is listed at $10.00 or $50.00 depending on what it does.
Most states publish expedite prices on a fee schedule and describe the outcome loosely. North Carolina puts the whole thing in statute, promises a result rather than a priority, and then constrains its own office in a way no other state on this network does.
N.C.G.S. § 55D-11, captioned “Expedited filings”, reads in full: “A person submitting a document for filing may request an expedited filing only at the time the document is submitted. The Secretary of State shall guarantee the expedited filing of the document if the document is in proper form and accompanied by all applicable fees, including the following fee: (1) Two hundred dollars ($200.00) for the filing by the end of the same business day of a document received by 12:00 noon; or (2) One hundred dollars ($100.00) for the filing of a document within 24 hours after receipt, excluding weekends and holidays. The Secretary of State shall not collect the fees allowed in this section unless the person submitting the document for filing is informed by the Secretary of State of the fees prior to the filing of the document.”
Three things in that section are worth separating out, because each does different work.
The word guarantee is the first, and it is doing real work. Compare a state whose expedited service is defined as processing a document before others received the same day: that is a priority statement, and it promises nothing about when the filing completes. This one promises the filing, conditional on the document being in proper form and the fees being paid.
The noon cutoff is the second. The two-hundred-dollar tier is not a same-day tier generally; it is a same-day tier for a document received by 12:00 noon. A document arriving at one in the afternoon does not buy the same outcome for the same money, and the statute rather than a practice note is where that limit lives.
The closing sentence is the third and it is the unusual one. The Secretary of State may not collect an expedited fee unless the filer was told about it beforehand. That is a consumer protection written into a fee statute, and it means an unexplained expedite charge on a filing service invoice is not something the state could have imposed without notice.
What the section does not do is publish an ordinary turnaround. It prices the queue-jump and says nothing at all about the queue, so a filer who does not pay has no published expectation to work from.
North Carolina puts the registered agent requirement on the formation document rather than making a reader chase it through a general title, and the form settles one question by not asking it.
Form L-01 carries the requirement as two consecutive items: the name of the initial registered agent, and the street address and county of the initial registered agent office. In the address block the fields run number and street, city, state, zip code and county — and the state field is pre-filled with NC. It is not a choice.
The instruction accompanying the agent field sets out who is eligible, in three categories: an individual who resides in North Carolina; a domestic business corporation, nonprofit corporation, or limited liability company whose business office is identical with the registered office; or a foreign corporation, nonprofit corporation or limited liability company authorized to transact business or conduct affairs in North Carolina whose business office is identical with the registered office.
The phrase doing the work in the second and third categories is “identical with the registered office”. An entity agent cannot be at one address while the registered office is at another; the two must match, which is why the address block on the form is headed as the address of the registered agent office rather than as the agent’s mailing address.
The form cites the limited liability company act for the act of formation itself, and the formation provision points to the common-provisions chapter of the General Statutes for the machinery around it — which is the chapter that also carries the expedited filing section quoted above. One chapter governs the mechanics of filing for every entity type in the state.
A county is required as well as a street address, which is not universal and is easy to leave blank on a form filled in from another state’s template.
New venture pricing turns on the operation, not on how few state credentials it needs.
Send the equipment list, the radius, the commodity and whether anything ever runs over dimension, and we will fit the North Carolina pieces into the submission.
This is the one place in the North Carolina state layer where the arithmetic runs backwards from expectation, and the agency’s own guidance contradicts its own fee table about it.
The duty is general: each business corporation, limited liability company, limited liability partnership and limited liability limited partnership files an annual report with the Secretary of State.
The due-date chart states the limited liability company row: “Your report is due on April 15th of each year after the year of creation. Online $203.00* Paper $200.00”, with the footnote “* Fee includes a $3.00 electronic filing fee for credit cards. The electronic fee for ACH transactions is $2.00”. So the online figure is $203.00 by card, $202.00 by bank transfer, and the paper figure is $200.00.
The paper-filing page then says: “The process to file a paper annual report takes longer and costs more than filing online.” On the state’s own numbers, the second half of that sentence is not correct for a limited liability company — paper is the cheaper of the two, by two or three dollars depending on payment method. The first half about time is not quantified anywhere we read.
The date is the other distinguishing feature, and it separates limited liability companies from every other entity type in the state. Corporations and partnerships are due on the fifteenth day of the fourth month following the entity’s fiscal year end — a moving date derived from the entity’s own calendar. The limited liability company is flatly April 15, regardless of fiscal year. A carrier that has chosen a non-calendar fiscal year for tax reasons has not moved this deadline.
The agency also publishes a warning about the market that has grown around this filing, and it is worth carrying verbatim because it describes a real cost: “Vendors are aggressively pushing ‘priority,’ ‘early’ Annual Report filing, charging fees on top of the filing fees required by statute. Save time and money – file online after the first of the year…”
The practical reading is that two hundred dollars a year is the recurring cost of the entity in North Carolina, the channel choice is worth two or three dollars, and anything materially above that figure is somebody’s service fee rather than the state’s.
North Carolina is a participating state in the national registration for interstate carriers; that was read on the plan’s own participating states list on September 2, 2026. The Department of Transportation is the state agency named on the plan’s own per-state contact record.
A purely intrastate operation sits outside this program entirely — it reaches interstate operations — so a startup that never leaves the state can stop reading here. For everyone else the amounts follow.
One further note on the sources for this figure. The current table carries its own source note at 89 FR 51276, June 17, 2024, and the federal electronic code marks the section with links to the amendments published on September 1, 2026. Both were visible on the day this was read, which is why both figures can be stated with confidence about their own periods.
North Carolina splits the two programs a carrier tends to think of as one, and the split is by agency rather than by function, so the two live in different bodies of law as well as at different desks.
Apportioned registration sits with the Division of Motor Vehicles, within the Department of Transportation. The cover of the state’s own manual identifies it as the department’s registration plan manual, revised June 2025.
That manual defines an apportionable vehicle as any power unit used or intended for use in two or more member jurisdictions and used for the transportation of persons for hire or designed, used, or maintained primarily for the transportation of property, and which “has two axles and a gross vehicle weight or registered gross vehicle weight in excess of 26,000 pounds … or has three or more axles, regardless of weight; or is used in combination, when the gross vehicle of weight of such combination exceeds 26,000 pounds”.
The middle limb carries no weight figure. A three-axle power unit is apportionable on the axle count alone, which is the limb most likely to catch a light combination that has cleared the weight test.
The fuel tax agreement sits with the Department of Revenue instead, and by statute rather than by practice. The road tax article discussed in the next section defines a motor carrier as a person operating a qualified motor vehicle on a North Carolina highway, and delegates the meaning of qualified motor vehicle to the agreement. The Department of Revenue publishes the compliance material.
For a new venture the operational consequence is that the plates and the fuel license are two applications to two agencies with two sets of correspondence, and that a question about one will not be answered by the other.
This is the provision that most distinguishes North Carolina from its neighbours on this network, and it is one sentence long. Most fuel-based motor carrier taxes are instruments of interstate commerce and say so, either by naming the agreement or by defining the taxpayer as someone who crosses a line. This one expressly does both jobs.
The levy is at G.S. § 105-449.38: “A road tax for the privilege of using the streets and highways of this State is imposed upon every motor carrier on the amount of motor fuel or alternative fuel used by the carrier in its operations within this State. The tax shall be at the rate established by the Secretary … This tax is in addition to any other taxes imposed on motor carriers.”
The scope sentence is at G.S. § 105-449.37(c), and it is unambiguous: a motor carrier operating a qualified motor vehicle in this State must apply, obtain the appropriate license and decals for the vehicle, and “The Article applies to both an interstate motor carrier subject to the International Fuel Tax Agreement and to an intrastate motor carrier.”
So a carrier that never leaves North Carolina is not outside this article by virtue of never leaving. Whether it is inside depends on the vehicle test, not on the geography.
That vehicle test is delegated. Subsection (a)(6) reads, in full: “Qualified motor vehicle. – Defined in the International Fuel Tax Agreement.” The test that decides who owes a North Carolina tax is therefore written in a multi-jurisdiction agreement rather than in the General Statutes.
Subsection (a)(1) then fixes which version of that agreement governs: the articles of agreement adopted by the association “as amended as of January 1, 2022”. That is a freeze, and it matters for the next paragraph.
The agreement’s definition, at its own article II, gives three alternatives: two axles and a gross or registered gross weight exceeding 26,000 pounds; “having three or more axles regardless of weight”; or use in combination where the combination exceeds 26,000 pounds. Recreational vehicles are excluded.
One hedge belongs on that quotation and we state it rather than burying it. The document actually opened in this reading carries an effective date of January 2026 — one edition newer than the version North Carolina has adopted. The three limbs are identical between the two, so the substance stated above holds. But the text quoted is not, strictly, the adopted text, and anyone relying on this for a marginal case should read the January 1, 2022 version rather than the current one.
Two consequences for a light intrastate operation. The axle limb reaches a three-axle unit at any weight, and the scope sentence means being purely intrastate is no answer to it. A short-term alternative exists at G.S. § 105-449.49: on payment of a fee of fifty dollars, a permitting service may obtain a temporary permit authorizing a motor carrier to operate a vehicle in the State for three days.
A general-freight startup in North Carolina applies for no state operating credential. It may nevertheless need a permit, and the trigger is dimensional rather than commercial — which means the requirement can arrive years into an operation, on a single load, with no prior relationship to the state.
G.S. § 20-119(a) provides that the Department of Transportation “may, in its discretion, upon application, for good cause being shown therefor, issue a special permit in writing authorizing the applicant to operate or move a vehicle of a size or weight exceeding a maximum specified in this Article”. Two constraints sit in that sentence and both are unusual: the power is discretionary rather than mandatory, and it is conditioned on good cause being shown.
One category is closed outright. The same subsection provides that “the Department is not authorized to issue any permit to operate or move over the State highways twin trailers, commonly referred to as double bottom trailers.” That is a bar rather than a discretion.
The permit travels with the vehicle and is open to inspection by any peace officer. And municipal authorities may issue their own permits for city streets under the same subsection — a second permitting authority rather than a substitute for the first, which matters for a move that begins or ends inside a town.
The fees are in the statute. A single trip attracts a fee of twelve dollars for each dimension over lawful dimensions, including height, length, width and weight up to 132,000 pounds, plus three dollars per 1,000 pounds above 132,000 pounds for overweight vehicles. Annual permits for a single vehicle are $200.00 to move house trailers or trailer frames and $185.00 to move other commodities. An application requiring an engineering study for pavement, structures or other special conditions carries a nonrefundable application fee of one hundred dollars.
A protection sits at subsection (b1) that is worth knowing because it caps an administrative burden rather than a cost: “Neither the Department nor the Board may require review or renewal of annual permits, with or without fee, more than once per calendar year.” An annual permit cannot be turned into a quarterly one by review.
There is an emergency route as well, for a vehicle or combination responding to an event that could result in severe damage, injury or loss of life or property. It allows travel from a specific origin to destination and return around the clock including holidays, conditioned on banners, flags and safety devices, and on a law enforcement escort or certified escort vehicle operator between sunset and sunrise, with the requestor obliged to contact the central permit office on the next business day to complete documentation and pay the fees.
The important qualification for an ordinary operation: none of this bites until the load goes over the legal size or weight maxima. An in-gauge combination needs no permit under this section. What the section does is convert an occasional over-dimension move from a question into a priced, discretionary application.
A bond requirement exists where a credential exists to secure. For a general-property intrastate operation in North Carolina there is no such credential, and the negative follows from that rather than from a failed search.
The two instruments that would carry a carrier bond were read in full. The State Highway Patrol’s motor carrier safety subchapter contains exactly two rules and both were read; neither contains the word bond or the word surety. And the Utilities Commission certificate track, which is where a bond would ordinarily attach, does not reach general property at all — G.S. § 62-262(a) reaches “the transportation of passengers or household goods in intrastate commerce”, and the definitions were narrowed to match by the same 1995 session law. That analysis is set out on our hot shot page rather than repeated here.
What does exist is not a carrier instrument. North Carolina’s general compulsory financial responsibility law offers alternatives to a liability policy that are available to any motorist, and two of them are quantified in a way worth knowing about.
G.S. § 20-279.24(a) allows proof to be furnished by filing the bond of a surety company, or “a bond with at least two individual sureties each owning real estate within this State, and together having equities in such real estate over and above any encumbrances thereon equal in value to at least twice the amount of such bond”, scheduled in the bond and approved by the clerk of superior court where the land sits. The bond is conditioned for payments in the amounts and circumstances a motor vehicle liability policy would cover, and is not cancellable except after twenty days’ written notice.
The individual-surety route creates a real encumbrance rather than a promise. The bond “shall constitute a lien upon the real estate therein described from and after filing for recordation to the same extent as in the case of ordinary mortgages and shall be regarded as the equivalent of a mortgage or deed of trust”, foreclosable by public sale. Anyone contemplating it should understand that it puts a recorded lien on named land.
The cash alternative is at G.S. § 20-279.25(a) and is the only figure of its kind in this state layer: proof may be evidenced by a certificate of the State Treasurer that the person has deposited one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, or securities of the kind purchasable by savings banks or for trust funds with a market value of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The Treasurer may not accept the deposit, and the Commissioner may not accept the certificate, unless accompanied by evidence that there are no unsatisfied judgments of any character against the depositor in the county where the depositor resides.
Both sections carry recent amendment history and neither carries a repeal marker. Neither is a motor carrier instrument, and neither should be presented as one.
Whether a state extends the federal new entrant safety assurance program to its own intrastate carriers is answered by reading whatever adopts federal parts into state law. North Carolina has two such instruments, they were written by different bodies, and they were both read in full.
The first is the State Highway Patrol’s rule. Its subchapter contains exactly two rules. The adopted set across both is: parts 390 through 397 for interstate carriers and, on stated conditions, for intrastate ones; a narrower inspection range with its appendix reaching lower; and the hazardous materials parts. That is the complete adopted set.
The second is the statute. G.S. § 20-376(1) defines the federal safety and hazardous materials regulations as “The federal motor carrier safety regulations contained in 49 C.F.R. Parts 171 through 180, 382, and 390 through 398.”
Neither list contains the part that houses the new entrant program. Neither contains the financial responsibility part either. So there is no state-adopted new entrant safety assurance program for a purely intrastate North Carolina carrier to be inside, and no state-adopted federal financial responsibility minimum reaching intrastate operation.
The two lists do not agree with each other, and we record that rather than smoothing it. The statute names the hazardous materials parts as 171 through 180, adds 382, and runs its safety range to 398. The rule names 390 through 397 and a wider hazardous materials range, and does not mention 382 at all. Two instruments, two lists, one shared silence about the audit part.
The edition treatment differs as well and it is worth knowing which is which. The rule is rolling and says so: all cited parts are incorporated by reference “including any subsequent amendments”, and the hazardous materials rule repeats the phrase word for word. The statute carries no edition, no revision date and no as-amended qualifier of any kind.
The rule was readopted with effect from November 1, 2018. How much of the adopted parts reaches a light intrastate unit, and what the state substitutes for the federal hours and medical rules, is set out on our North Carolina hot shot page.
On most state pages this section describes a conditioning relation and insists it is not a sequence. Here there is nothing to describe, and the reason is structural.
For a general-property intrastate operation North Carolina has no state authority step. There is no certificate to obtain, no permit to hold and no filing to make before beginning work. With no state credential in the picture, there is nothing for insurance, formation, registration or anything else to be sequenced against.
That is a proved negative rather than an absence of evidence. The Utilities Commission article was read section by section, along with the definitions that were narrowed in 1995, and none of them conditions one startup step on another for this carrier class. The reading is set out in detail on our hot shot page.
Two things do carry timing, and neither is a startup sequence. The annual report is due on a fixed calendar date each year after the year of creation. And where a load goes over dimension, the oversize permit is applied for before the move and travels with the vehicle — a condition on a movement, not on the enterprise.
We say all of this explicitly because the absence is itself the answer to a question new operators ask constantly, which is what North Carolina wants from them before they start. For this class, the honest answer is nothing at the state level, and the work is federal.
It would be easy, and wrong, to fill that space with a numbered list assembled from the tasks that do exist. Forming an entity, arranging coverage, registering federally and obtaining plates are all real, and North Carolina does not order them against each other. Presenting them as steps would assert a sequence no provision read contains.
Several parts of the North Carolina picture are handled in detail on our North Carolina hot shot page, and repeating them here would add length without adding anything a reader could use.
The intrastate adoption line is one — the weight at which the adopted federal parts begin to apply to an intrastate operation, and the separate, lower threshold at which the inspection provisions reach a vehicle regardless of that line. So is what North Carolina puts in place of the federal hours rule for intrastate drivers, and the medical qualification route that runs through an exemption officer with a fixed maximum term.
So is the reading that establishes there is no certificate requirement for general property: the 1995 session law that narrowed the definitions rather than adding an exemption, and why that means there is no exemption list to search.
And so is the out-of-service fine schedule, including the fact that fines are assessed against the carrier rather than the driver and the window within which one can be contested.
The North Carolina hot shot cell carries all of them with the provisions quoted in full.
What this page covers is the surrounding layer: forming the company, the statutory expedite guarantee, the agent on the face of the form, the annual report and its inverted pricing, the national registration, apportioned plates, the road tax that reaches intrastate carriers, oversize permitting, and the financial-responsibility alternatives that belong to every motorist rather than to carriers.
One figure above has a known change date, and two others carry a version question rather than a date.
October 1, 2026 is the change. On that morning the smallest registration bracket goes from $46.00 to $55.00 and stays there for registration year 2027 onward, every larger bracket climbs alongside it, and the two federal section numbers that currently hold the tables swap what they contain.
January 1, 2022 is the first version question. The road tax article delegates its vehicle test to the fuel tax agreement and fixes that agreement at the version as amended on that date. The document actually opened in this reading carries an effective date of January 2026. The three limbs are identical, so the substance holds, but a marginal case should be read against the adopted version rather than the current one.
The rule side carries no date at all in one direction and a rolling clause in the other. The Highway Patrol rule incorporates its federal parts including any subsequent amendments, so its content moves with the federal text. The statutory definition of the same regulations carries no edition, no revision date and no qualifier, which leaves the version question open on its face.
April 15 is the recurring one, each year after the year of creation, and it does not move with a fiscal year.
All remaining figures were read at their own sources on September 2, 2026. Where no change date accompanies one, the document we opened supplied none. That is what we observed, and it is the limit of what we claim.
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 North Carolina 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 North Carolina 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.
One hundred and twenty-five dollars. The Secretary of State’s forms index lists the articles of organization, form L-01, at $125.00, and the form repeats the figure in its own closing note. There is no online or paper split on formation. Read September 2, 2026.
Yes, and the tiers are in statute rather than on a fee page. N.C.G.S. § 55D-11 sets $200.00 for filing by the end of the same business day where the document is received by 12:00 noon, and $100.00 for filing within 24 hours after receipt excluding weekends and holidays. The statute says the Secretary of State shall guarantee the expedited filing, conditional on the document being in proper form and the fees being paid.
No. The closing sentence of N.C.G.S. § 55D-11 provides that the office shall not collect the fees allowed in the section unless the person submitting the document is informed of them prior to the filing. An unexplained expedite charge on an invoice is not something the state could have imposed without notice.
April 15 of each year after the year of creation. That is a fixed calendar date and it distinguishes limited liability companies from corporations and partnerships, whose reports are due on the fifteenth day of the fourth month following the entity’s fiscal year end. Choosing a non-calendar fiscal year does not move it.
On the agency’s own figures, yes. The chart gives online at $203.00 and paper at $200.00, with a footnote explaining that the online figure includes a $3.00 electronic filing fee for credit cards and $2.00 for bank transfers. The agency’s paper-filing page nevertheless states that paper costs more, which its own fee table contradicts.
No — the program is directed at interstate operations, so a carrier whose loads never leave the state falls outside it altogether. A carrier that does cross pays in the smallest bracket, which takes in fleets of zero to two commercial motor vehicles: $46.00 for the entity through the 2026 registration year, and $55.00 once October 1, 2026 arrives.
It can. G.S. § 105-449.37(c) says in terms that the article “applies to both an interstate motor carrier subject to the International Fuel Tax Agreement and to an intrastate motor carrier.” Being purely intrastate is no answer to it; whether the article reaches you depends on the vehicle test rather than on the geography.
A qualified motor vehicle, which G.S. § 105-449.37(a)(6) defines only by reference to the fuel tax agreement. The agreement gives three alternatives: two axles over 26,000 pounds, three or more axles regardless of weight, or use in combination where the combination exceeds 26,000 pounds. North Carolina fixes the agreement at the version as amended as of January 1, 2022.
Two different ones. Apportioned registration is run by the Division of Motor Vehicles within the Department of Transportation, whose manual was revised June 2025. The fuel tax agreement and the road tax sit with the Department of Revenue, by statute rather than by practice.
Yes, and the department’s power to issue one is discretionary and conditioned on good cause being shown. A single trip costs $12.00 for each dimension over lawful dimensions up to 132,000 pounds, plus $3.00 per 1,000 pounds above that. Annual permits are $200.00 for house trailers or trailer frames and $185.00 for other commodities. Twin trailers cannot be permitted at all.
No, and the reason is that there is no state carrier credential for a bond to secure. The Highway Patrol safety subchapter contains two rules and neither uses the word bond or surety, and the certificate track that would ordinarily carry one reaches only passengers and household goods. The bond alternatives that do exist belong to the general financial responsibility law and are available to any motorist.
Not through either instrument that could have adopted it. The Highway Patrol rule adopts parts 390 through 397, a narrower inspection range with its appendix, and the hazardous materials parts. The statutory definition names parts 171 through 180, 382, and 390 through 398. Neither list contains the part housing the new entrant program, and neither contains the financial responsibility part.
No, and the reason is structural rather than a gap in the reading. For a general-property intrastate operation there is no state authority step at all, so there is nothing for formation, coverage, federal registration or plates to be sequenced against. Nothing read conditions one startup task on another, and no numbered order is asserted.
Every figure on this page was read at the source below on September 2, 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.
