Tampa’s truck routes and restrictions

On the designated truck routes. The city code says all regulated trucks within the city shall be operated only over and along the designated truck routes (opens in a new tab).

The routes are every street under the state transportation department’s jurisdiction, unless otherwise prohibited, and a table of named roads (opens in a new tab). Adamo Drive, Dale Mabry Highway, Hillsborough Avenue and Causeway Boulevard are among its entries. The city posts the official map on its Truck Route Map and Ordinance page (opens in a new tab).

The rule reaches far more than tractor-trailers. A regulated truck is a vehicle with six or more tires, except step-vans and pickup trucks with a capacity of one ton or less, or a vehicle required by law to display a DOT number or gross vehicle weight rating (opens in a new tab).

A route is not open to every truck. Two entries in the table, on Henderson Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue, are marked no semi-trailers allowed (opens in a new tab).

Only as necessary to reach a destination off the routes or to do its business, and in a way that keeps the distance traveled off them to a minimum. After its last stop, the code requires a truck to return to a truck route by the shortest possible route (opens in a new tab).

Anyone driving or in charge of a regulated truck that is off the route system must be prepared to show police officers the truck’s log book, weight slips, delivery slips, or other written evidence of the truck’s origin and destination (opens in a new tab).

A violation of the route rule results in a civil citation under the city code (opens in a new tab). The ordinance exempts authorized emergency vehicles, and a truck on an official detour from a street it could lawfully use (opens in a new tab).

The route list has changed. On December 1, 2016 the City Council approved a revised ordinance that restricts regulated trucks on North 21st Street from Adamo Drive to East 23rd Avenue, on North 22nd Street from Adamo Drive to East Hillsborough Avenue, and on parts of East 4th and East 7th Avenues (opens in a new tab).

The city’s flyer on the change places those streets in the vicinity of Ybor City, the Port of Tampa and Palmetto Beach (opens in a new tab). Between the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway and Adamo Drive, 21st and 22nd Streets are still in the ordinance’s table of truck routes (opens in a new tab).

Outside the city limits the city’s ordinance does not apply, and the county’s rule runs the other way. In unincorporated Hillsborough County it is unlawful to drive a truck on a county road designated and posted against through truck traffic (opens in a new tab), unless the truck is headed to a destination on that road or to one that can be reached only by it.

The county designates a restricted road by resolution of its Board of County Commissioners and posts it with signs, and a violation is a civil infraction (opens in a new tab).

Then the questions are where the truck was going and why it was on that street. The city’s code puts those questions to the driver and names the papers that answer them: the log book, weight slips and delivery slips (opens in a new tab) for the trip.

Not every Florida truck has a logbook. A driver in in-state commerce who stays within 150 air miles of base, and is not hauling placarded hazardous materials, does not have to keep the federal record of duty status (opens in a new tab) if the carrier keeps time records in its place.

For the trucks the federal rules do cover, much of the proof sits in the carrier’s own files. Federal rules require a carrier to keep records of duty status and their supporting documents for not less than 6 months (opens in a new tab). So the first questions in a case are what kind of truck it was, where it was going, and what records its company was required to keep.

Hillsborough County is, by itself, Florida’s Thirteenth Judicial Circuit (opens in a new tab), and the circuit lists the Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs Street, Tampa (opens in a new tab) among its locations.

The city limits matter for the truck rules above. The court depends on the county. A case is generally brought in the county where the defendant resides or where the cause of action accrued (opens in a new tab), which for a crash usually means the county where it happened.

State roads are the state transportation department’s. Hillsborough County is in the department’s District Seven, whose main office is in Tampa (opens in a new tab).