Trucking companies in Florida: 10,129 employers, 105,340 registered carriers and how to check one

This report is for Florida shippers choosing a carrier, drivers comparing employers, and businesses that sell to trucking companies: insurers, dealers, repair shops, factoring firms and compliance services. It uses two federal counts that differ tenfold, and you need both.

Florida trucking in Census data

County Business Patterns 2023 counts establishments with paid employees in NAICS 484 (Truck Transportation) in the state of Florida.

In broader bands, 9,467 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 536 have 20 to 99 and 126 have 100 or more. These are locations, not companies (a carrier with yards in Miami and Tampa counts twice), and owner-operators with no employees aren't counted.

Where the employers are

Miami-Dade has the most establishments; Duval has the most jobs. Jacksonville is where I-10 meets I-95 and where JAXPORT handled 1,388,841 TEUs (twenty-foot container units) and 506,237 vehicles in its fiscal 2025, which starts each October 1.

The federal register counts ten times as many

FMCSA's Company Census File holds every USDOT registration. We counted active records for carriers with at least one power unit, a for-hire classification, no passenger operations and a physical address in Florida (file updated 29 October 2026).

The gap with Census is mostly owner-operators with no payroll, plus stale paperwork. Carriers must update their MCS-150 every 24 months or risk deactivation (49 CFR 390.19), yet six in ten of these records haven't been updated in that window. The figures are self-reported: 110 Florida records claim 500 or more power units, some of them plain typing errors (one lists 599,994 power units and two drivers).

Carriers tick their own cargo types. Of the 105,340, 67.9% list general freight, 30.6% building materials or construction (one combined figure, because the file records those two categories identically), 15.3% motor vehicles, 9.2% logs and lumber, 8.6% fresh produce and 4.0% intermodal containers. Because FMCSA's open-data file doesn't always match a carrier's own SAFER record, treat these shares as indicative.

The largest fleets, and the public company

Landstar System, Inc. is the SEC-listed trucking company headquartered in Florida, at 13410 Sutton Park Drive South, Jacksonville, per its 10-K cover. It reported revenue of $4,743,760,000 for fiscal 2025 (ended December 27, 2025), down 2%. Landstar works through about 960 independent commission sales agents and more than 70,000 third-party capacity providers; owner-operators it calls BCO Independent Contractors generated 38% of revenue and truck brokerage carriers 53%. That helps explain why its Landstar Ranger record in SAFER shows zero power units: the trucks belong to others.

Fleets registered in Florida, with figures from each carrier's SAFER snapshot as of 28 October 2026:

For the national picture, see the largest trucking companies by revenue.

Florida's rules for trucks that stay in state

Florida applies most federal safety rules (49 CFR parts 382 to 386 and 390 to 397, as they stood on December 31, 2023) to intrastate trucks, with an exemption for vehicles under 26,001 pounds and several for farm hauling (section 316.302, Florida Statutes). Insurance minimums for commercial vehicles are set by weight in section 627.7415:

For interstate for-hire carriers of general freight in vehicles of 10,001 pounds or more, the federal minimum is $750,000 (49 CFR 387.9).

How to check a Florida carrier

1. Look up the USDOT number in FMCSA's SAFER Company Snapshot. Confirm it's active, the operation (interstate or intrastate only) fits your load, and the MCS-150 date is under two years old.
2. Check operating authority for interstate loads. SAFER shows whether the company is authorized as a motor carrier, a broker or both; a broker arranges the haul but doesn't run the truck.
3. Match insurance to weight and cargo. Ask for a certificate naming you that meets the Florida minimum for the vehicle, or the federal minimum for interstate work.
4. Compare inspections with the national out-of-service averages SAFER prints, and call two shippers on a similar lane.

Selling to Florida trucking companies

Most Florida carriers are intrastate one- and two-truck businesses, so offers that work are short and specific to a truck class: insurance at renewal, tires, repairs, financing. Only the 126 large establishments run anything like procurement.

Illustrative example. The agency and its conversion rates are invented; the counts are FMCSA and Census data above.

Suncoast Fleet Cover (suncoast.example) insures small fleets hauling building materials. Florida has 22,622 for-hire carriers with 2 to 9 power units. If the statewide shares hold for them, 30.6% list building materials or construction (about 6,920), and 39.6% of those have a current MCS-150 (about 2,740 live businesses). At a 4% reply rate that's 110 conversations; if one in five asks for a quote and one in three of those binds, 7 new fleets. Bebop can find carriers that match a description like this and research each one first.

Subject: Insurance for [company]'s [number] trucks

Hi [first name],

Your USDOT record shows [number] trucks hauling building materials out of [city]. Florida sets the liability minimum by weight, and most fleets your size run a mix of classes on one policy.

We price each truck at its own class, which usually trims the premium on the lighter units.

Could I send a side-by-side before your renewal in [month]?

[Your name]

Sources for names and checks

Next step: compare Florida's one-truck market with a state of bigger fleets in the report on trucking companies in Georgia.