Your Form E Filing Does Not Set Your Liability Limit

What a Form E filing actually certifies

Form E is the Uniform Motor Carrier Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability Certificate of Insurance. Form H is its cargo counterpart, described by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission as the binding uniform motor carrier cargo certificate of insurance. Both are state documents, and only your insurance company can file them with the agency that issued your intrastate authority. Pennsylvania says exactly that on its filing page and gives a carrier 60 days to get binding proof on file.

A Form E certifies that you carry the limits your state schedule requires. That is its whole job. It says nothing about whether a second, higher number applies to you at the same time. For most general freight carriers running inside one state it never does. For a narrower group it always does, and the trigger is not geography. Our Form E and Form H filing page covers how the filings themselves work. This post is about the number they do not settle.

Part 387 does not stop at the state line

The applicability section of the federal financial responsibility rules holds two sentences doing very different work. 49 CFR 387.3(a) applies the subpart to for-hire motor carriers hauling property in interstate or foreign commerce. That is the sentence everybody knows. Then 387.3(b) applies the same subpart to motor carriers hauling hazardous materials, hazardous substances, or hazardous wastes in interstate, foreign, or intrastate commerce. That third word is the whole point. For hazmat the federal rule reaches hauls that never leave the state, and it covers private carriage as well as for-hire, so running your own product does not get you out of it.

There is a carve out and it is narrow. Section 387.3(c)(2) says the subpart does not apply to non-bulk oil, non-bulk hazardous materials, substances, or wastes moved in intrastate commerce, with an exception for a highway route controlled quantity of a Class 7 radioactive material. Intrastate plus non-bulk is out. Intrastate plus bulk is in.

In bulk is a defined term and the number is 3,500 gallons

Everything turns on those two words, and the rule defines them rather than leaving them to argument. Under 49 CFR 387.5, in bulk means hauling property as cargo in containment systems with capacities in excess of 3,500 water gallons. Division 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 explosives and Division 2.3 Hazard Zone A gases are pulled out of that gallon test and counted in any quantity instead. A petroleum tank trailer clears 3,500 gallons without trying, which is why bulk fuel and chemical work inside one state lands here and a palletized load of the same product usually does not.

FMCSA has been tightening this language for years. In a technical corrections rule published July 21, 2026 at 91 FR 45653, the agency struck the words "with capacities in bulk" from the second row of the limits table as redundant, and explained that the table's assorted quantity descriptions had been replaced over time with that one defined term to eliminate confusion. When a regulator keeps rewriting one column, that column is where people get it wrong.

How the federal numbers compare to a state schedule

Table 1 to 49 CFR 387.9 carries the amounts. Nonhazardous property at a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,001 pounds or more sits at $750,000 and is written for interstate or foreign commerce only. The second row, covering hazardous substances defined in 49 CFR 171.8 hauled in bulk in cargo tanks, portable tanks or hopper-type vehicles plus bulk explosives and bulk gases, sits at $5,000,000 and names interstate, foreign, or intrastate commerce right in the carriage column. The third row, covering oil listed in 49 CFR 172.101 and the hazardous wastes, materials and substances not named elsewhere, sits at $1,000,000 and reaches intrastate commerce in bulk only.

States often mirror those figures. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission publishes an intrastate schedule that puts general commodities at $300,000 and $750,000 depending on weight, then jumps to $1 million and $5 million for the hazmat categories. On the Form H side a state can sit above the federal floor, and Washington asks $10,000 and $20,000 for household goods cargo where 49 CFR 387.303T(c) sets $5,000 and $10,000. The lesson is not that states run low. It is that the commodity sets the number and the state line does not.

The MCS-90 nobody filed for you

Here is the part that catches intrastate operators. Complying with 387.9 is not a filing at all. Section 387.7(a) bars a motor carrier from operating until it has obtained and has in effect the minimum levels, and 387.7(d) says proof shall be maintained at the motor carrier's principal place of business as an MCS-90 endorsement, an MCS-82 surety bond, or a written FMCSA self-insurance authorization.

Nothing in that list gets mailed to a state agency. Your Form E went to the state and your MCS-90 sits in your office, where 387.7(e)(1) makes it public information produced for review on reasonable request by a member of the public. A plaintiff attorney counts as a member of the public. If you haul bulk product inside one state and have never seen an MCS-90 attached to your policy, call your agent this week. Our MCS-90 page walks through what the endorsement does and does not do, and the tanker truck insurance page covers how bulk exposure gets underwritten.

Get the limit right before somebody asks

If you run bulk product on intrastate authority, your commodity decides the limit you need, not your state. Send us the product, the tank size and the states you run and we will tell you which row of the table you sit in and what the market charges to sit there. Get a truck insurance quote in under a minute on our quote form, or call or text 423-264-4255. If you need the state paperwork handled at the same time, start with our Form E and Form H filing guide and we will coordinate the filing with your insurer.