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Florida’s own minimum liability limit for a heavy truck running inside the state is $300,000. The broker who just tendered you a load almost certainly wants $1,000,000. Both numbers are real, and the gap between them is where Florida carriers get hurt.

We are an independent agency in Frisco, Texas. We are licensed in Florida, we write commercial trucking and towing risks there, we make the state and federal filings for our clients, and this page sets out the coverage and the paperwork side by side.

Who we write in Florida

We do not write personal auto, and we are not the right agency for a single pickup with no commercial exposure. Everything else in the list above we quote regularly.

The corridors and the work that set the risk

Florida is a peninsula, which means the freight has nowhere else to go. Almost everything moves on four roads, and underwriters price them differently.

I-95. The east coast spine, from the Jacksonville port complex down through the Treasure Coast into the Miami metro. Heavy congestion at both ends and long, fast running in the middle.

I-75 and the Turnpike. The inland route and the toll spine, carrying produce north out of the southern counties and bringing dry freight down. Alligator Alley across the Everglades is a long stretch with very little between exits, which matters for breakdown and recovery exposure more than for frequency.

I-4. The Tampa–Orlando–Daytona corridor, and one of the most congested freight routes in the country. Short-radius work on I-4 rates nothing like a Jacksonville-to-Miami run does.

The ports and the yards. Drayage out of JAXPORT, Port Tampa Bay, Port Everglades and PortMiami is short-radius, high-frequency, and dominated by chassis and container exposure rather than highway miles. Trailer interchange and on-terminal liability carry real weight here.

Two things move a Florida quote that do not move a Texas one. The first is weather: physical damage on a Florida fleet is priced against named-storm and hail exposure, and where the equipment sits between loads is a question underwriters actually ask. The second is construction and aggregate volume, which keeps a large population of dump trucks and short-haul straight trucks on congested roads — a frequency profile, not a severity one.

Permits, filings and legal minimum limits

This is the part that generates the most calls. The dividing line is the freight, not the truck and not your address. If a load starts or ends outside Florida, or is one leg of a continuous move that does, you are in interstate commerce and the federal rules apply even if your own driving never leaves the state. If every load starts and ends inside Florida, you are intrastate. Plenty of Florida carriers are both at once.

Interstate, filed with FMCSA. A USDOT number first, operating authority (the MC number) if you haul regulated commodities for hire, a BOC-3 designating process agents, and proof of insurance carrying the MCS-90 endorsement. The federal minimum for a for-hire carrier of non-hazardous property at 10,001 lbs GVWR or more is $750,000 per occurrence. Oil and the hazardous materials listed in the regulations run to $1 million, and bulk hazardous substances to $5 million.

Two things about those worth knowing before you need them. The BOC-3 needs an agent for every state you operate in or through, all on a single form, and only one completed form may be on file at a time. You may designate yourself only for the state you reside in, and for a carrier operating commercial motor vehicles the form has to be filed by a process agent rather than by you. And the MCS-90 is not coverage for you: it guarantees the public gets paid up to the filed limit, and if your insurer pays under it where your policy would not have, you owe that money back.

Intrastate, and this is where Florida differs from most states. Florida does not issue a state operating-authority permit for property carriers the way California issues a Motor Carrier Permit. There is no Florida certificate to apply for and no state insurance filing to make. What Florida does require is a USDOT number — the Florida Highway Patrol’s commercial vehicle enforcement division states that a company meeting the threshold “is required to register for a USDOT Number and display it on all your commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) power units and intermodal equipment chassis.” Intrastate-only carriers pay no federal registration fee for it.

The Florida intrastate liability minimums are low, and you should know the numbers before a broker quotes you one. Section 627.7415 of the Florida Statutes sets combined bodily injury and property damage liability, in addition to any other insurance requirement, at:

  • $50,000 per occurrence at a gross vehicle weight of 26,000 lbs or more but less than 35,000 lbs
  • $100,000 per occurrence at 35,000 lbs or more but less than 44,000 lbs
  • $300,000 per occurrence at 44,000 lbs or more

A loaded tractor-trailer therefore satisfies Florida law at $300,000. Any vehicle subject to 49 CFR part 387 must carry the federal amount instead, so a truck in interstate service is back at $750,000 or higher. Violating section 627.7415 is a noncriminal traffic infraction. The statute takes its definition of a commercial motor vehicle from section 320.01, which sets the line at a gross vehicle weight of 26,001 lbs or more, or three or more axles regardless of weight.

Treat those figures as a legal floor and nothing else. Shippers and brokers write $1,000,000 into their contracts as a matter of course, and a single serious injury claim on I-4 will exhaust $300,000 before the first deposition.

Hours of service run differently inside Florida. Florida adopts the federal safety regulations — 49 CFR parts 382–386 and 390–397 — for intrastate carriers, but it adopts them as those regulations existed on 31 December 2023, so later federal amendments do not reach an intrastate Florida operation automatically. And for a driver operating solely in intrastate commerce and carrying no placardable hazardous material, section 316.302(2) substitutes Florida’s own driving limits: no driving beyond 12 hours following 10 consecutive hours off duty, none after the end of the 16th hour after coming on duty, and not after 70 hours in any 7 consecutive days, or 80 hours in 8 if the carrier operates every day of the week. That is meaningfully more room than the federal 11-and-14 rule, and it applies only while the work stays inside Florida.

If you tow, read section 323.002. Where a county or municipality runs a wrecker operator system and an unauthorized operator is flagged down at the scene of a wreck, that operator must disclose in writing, before the vehicle is connected, “whether he or she has in effect an insurance policy providing at least $300,000 of liability insurance and at least $50,000 of on-hook cargo insurance,” along with name, licence number, the fact that he is not the system’s authorized operator, and the maximum towing and storage charges. It is a disclosure duty rather than a mandate — but it has made $300,000 liability and $50,000 on-hook the figure Florida tow operators are measured against, and being the operator who has to disclose that he carries less is not a position worth being in.

UCR, annually. Unified Carrier Registration sits outside all of the above and renews every year with your base state, at a fee set by fleet size in six brackets running from 0–2 vehicles up to 1,001 or more. The amounts are reset by rulemaking most years — the 2027 registration year takes effect on 1 October 2026 — so the live table linked in the sources is the only version worth quoting.

What moves a Florida premium

In rough order of how much they matter: loss history, radius of operation, commodity, driver experience and MVRs, and the limits you actually choose above the legal floor. Physical damage is its own conversation in Florida because of named-storm and hail exposure, and where trucks and trailers are parked between loads is a question worth having an answer to. Port and drayage work is rated on congestion and equipment rather than distance. Two things are close to non-negotiable with underwriters — a real driver qualification file and telematics you can produce data from — and both are worth more at renewal than shopping the market is.

Florida trucking insurance questions we get

Do you have an office in Florida?

No. We have one staffed office, in Frisco, Texas, and we are licensed to write Florida risks from it. For commercial trucking that matters less than people expect: federal filings are electronic, Florida has no state insurance filing for property carriers to make, claims are handled by the carrier’s adjusters wherever the loss happens, and you will be talking to the same agent every time rather than whoever is at a local desk that day.

I only run inside Florida. Do I need operating authority?

Not a Florida operating-authority permit — the state does not issue one for property carriers. You do need a USDOT number and you do need to meet the section 627.7415 liability minimum for your weight class. Whether you need federal operating authority depends entirely on whether any load crosses the state line.

Is $300,000 enough liability?

It satisfies Florida law for a 44,000 lb-and-over vehicle in intrastate service. It is not enough. Brokers and shippers require $1,000,000 as standard, the federal floor for the same truck in interstate service is $750,000, and everything above your limit is yours personally.

Does Florida make my insurer file proof of coverage with the state?

No. Unlike California’s MC 65 M or the federal Form MCS-90 filings, Florida has no state-level insurance filing for property carriers. The obligation is to carry the coverage, and proof is produced on demand rather than lodged in advance.

I am based in Texas but I run loads into Florida. What applies?

The federal rules apply to the interstate movement, at $750,000 or higher, and Florida’s intrastate limits and hours-of-service variations do not reach you. If you also pick up and deliver entirely within Florida, that portion is intrastate work.

How fast can you get filings made?

Once coverage is bound, electronic federal filings usually go the same business day. What sets the timeline is underwriting, not the filing.

Talk to a Florida agent about your operation

We will tell you plainly which filings you actually need rather than selling you all of them, and if your current limits do not match the loads you are moving we will say so. Call 469-252-4001 or request a commercial trucking quote.

The requirements above are summarised from the published sources listed below, on the dates shown. Rules and fee schedules change and nothing here is legal advice — check the primary source or ask us before you file.

Sources