Trucking companies in Miami: thousands of one-truck carriers, airport perishables and how to vet one

This report is for Miami importers, exporters and forwarders looking for a carrier, drivers comparing employers, and B2B sellers whose customers are trucking companies: refrigeration and telematics vendors, insurers, factoring firms and truck dealers.

Miami-Dade trucking in Census data

County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 484 (Truck Transportation), for Miami-Dade County, Florida.

The wider Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro had 3,050 trucking establishments with 15,154 employees, so Miami-Dade holds 52.4% of the metro's establishments but 44.4% of its trucking jobs.

Local general freight is the largest segment, which fits a county where much of the work is moving freight between the airport, the port, warehouses and customers across South Florida. The 66 less-than-truckload sites average 18.8 employees, the only segment with real scale.

The Census Bureau withholds the three largest classes, and the published ones add up to the total. In broader bands, 1,535 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 53 have 20 to 99 and 9 have 100 or more. Owner-operators with no employees aren't in these counts at all.

30,860 registrations

FMCSA's Company Census File (29 October 2026) lists every USDOT registration, with fleet and cargo details the carriers enter themselves on form MCS-150.

FMCSA's open-data file records identical counts for meat and refrigerated food, so the table shows them as one combined figure. Cargo types are self-reported by carriers, and the open-data file doesn't always match a carrier's own SAFER record, so treat these counts as indicative.

Miami (15,993), Hialeah (6,697) and Homestead (2,176) addresses account for most. Self-reported data needs a sanity check here more than anywhere: one Miami registration claims 15,001 power units and 16,000 drivers, which would put it among the largest carriers in the country. We left it out of the table below.

The largest fleets

For-hire freight carriers with a Miami-Dade address, a 2024 or later MCS-150 update and a driver count consistent with the fleet:

Ryder Truck Rental, also in Coral Gables, registers 59,883 power units as a private fleet: its rental and lease trucks. The other big private fleets are MasTec (Coral Gables) and Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits (2,744 power units, Miami).

Ryder System is the SEC-listed company here, though under SIC 7510 (truck rental and leasing) rather than trucking. Its 10-K for 2025 gives its principal office as 2333 Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Coral Gables, and reports $12,665 million of total revenue, 51,600 employees in North America and 12,700 professional drivers. Its Dedicated Transportation Solutions business supplies customers with vehicles and drivers. No company in the trucking SIC codes is headquartered in Miami-Dade.

Airport freight and perishables

Miami International Airport says it handled an airport record 3.4 million tons of freight in 2025, 13.2% more than in 2024, and calls itself America's top airport for total and international freight. More than 35 all-cargo airlines serve it, and its 2024 imports were dominated by perishables: cut flowers, vegetables, fish and fruit. That freight reaches warehouses and customers by truck, much of it refrigerated, and 1,114 Miami-Dade carriers with 2 to 50 power units list meat, refrigerated food or fresh produce.

Vetting a Miami carrier

1. Match identity. Look up the USDOT and MC numbers in FMCSA's SAFER Company Snapshot, then call the phone number on the federal record, not the one in the email.
2. Check authority and insurance in FMCSA's Licensing and Insurance search. General freight needs at least $750,000 of liability cover (49 CFR 387.9); for perishables, ask for cargo cover with a reefer breakdown clause.
3. Read the dates. A registration created last month, or an MCS-150 more than 24 months old (49 CFR 390.19), deserves more questions.
4. Ask for the insurance certificate from the agent, not the carrier, naming you as certificate holder.
5. For airport loads, ask how the carrier handles temperature records from ramp to warehouse.

Prospecting Miami carriers

Illustrative example. The vendor and its rates are invented; the counts are from FMCSA's register and MIA's figures.

Bayside Reefer Watch (baysidereefer.example) sells temperature sensors that alert dispatch when a trailer drifts out of range. Its target is the 1,114 Miami-Dade carriers with 2 to 50 power units that list meat, refrigerated food or fresh produce. The owner usually decides; at a 5% callback rate, about 56 conversations, and if one in five tries it on two trailers, 11 trial fleets. The opener is a claim the owner has probably already paid for. Bebop can find carriers that match and research each one first. For the larger fleets, see how to find decision makers.

Hi [first name], [your name] from Bayside Reefer Watch. Quick question: when a load of flowers or fish from MIA gets rejected for temperature, who eats the claim at [company]?

We put a sensor in each trailer that texts your dispatcher the moment it drifts, so the driver can fix it before the receiver checks.

Can I put two on your trucks for a month, free, and you judge it on your own loads?

Miami sources

Next step: compare Miami with a port city of bigger fleets in the report on trucking companies in Jacksonville.