Kalamazoo, MI Parking Rules: Commercial & Oversized Vehicles (2026)

Kalamazoo's commercial-vehicle parking ban sits inside the general on-street parking article, City Code § 36-163(D)(1), which prohibits parking a commercial vehicle, or any equipment, trailer or truck, meeting any one of four thresholds: gross vehicle weight over 10,000 pounds, more than two axles, height exceeding nine feet measured from the ground, or length exceeding 21 feet, anywhere within a residential zoning district. Section 36-163(D)(2) borrows the state's definition of 'commercial vehicle' from the Michigan Vehicle Code, MCLA § 257.7, and lists semi-trucks, dump trucks, stake trucks, flatbed trucks, wreckers and tank trucks as examples.

The rule is not a total ban on commercial equipment appearing in a residential neighborhood: § 36-163(D)(3) carves out an exception for vehicles or equipment that are actually performing a service on the adjacent or underlying property, but only for the time reasonably necessary to finish that work, so a contractor's truck can sit outside a house being worked on but cannot be stored there overnight as a matter of routine. Enforcement runs through the same citation and presumption machinery as other Article V parking violations: § 36-163(D)(4) lets a citation against the vehicle's registered owner stand as prima facie evidence that the owner was responsible for the parked vehicle at the time of the violation.