Margate, FL Noise from Specific Sources: Delivery Truck Noise (2026)

Section 33-79 opens by declaring a list of acts to be loud, disturbing and excessive noise in violation of the Noise Control Code, and subsection (f), Loading operations, is the one that reaches delivery and service trucks. It covers loading, unloading, opening or otherwise handling boxes, crates, containers, garbage cans or similar objects. The restricted window runs from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. the following day, and the test inside that window is qualitative: the handling must be done in such a manner as to cause excessive and unnecessarily loud noises.

Quiet unloading at night is not what the subsection targets. The Margate Police Department administers the article as the city's noise control officers under Section 33-77. The subsection sits beside the numeric limits in Section 33-82, Table I, which cap any sound or noise source at 55 dBA at night and 60 dBA by day in residential districts, 60 dBA at night and 65 dBA by day in commercial-agricultural districts, and 65 dBA at night and 70 dBA by day in industrial districts. When a source can be measured in more than one district, the most restrictive district's limit applies at the boundary.

A business that needs time to install noise controls can ask the city manager for an exemption under Section 33-81, which cannot exceed 15 days but can be renewed for another 15-day period if satisfactory progress is shown. Emergency work is exempt under Section 33-80, and permission for a public event that would otherwise break the code is granted only by the city commission for a specific location, time and date under Section 33-90.