Kent, WA Parking Rules: Commercial & Oversized Vehicles (2026)

The Kent city council found in KCC 9.38.120 that parking or storing trucks, vans, tractor-trailers, and semi-trailers over 14,001 pounds gross vehicle weight rating on city streets presents unacceptable risks to public health, safety, and welfare when the vehicles are not actively in use. KCC 9.38.130 turns that finding into an outright ban: no vehicle over that weight, licensed or not, may be stored or parked on any city street.

The ban carries four exemptions. A vehicle being actively loaded or unloaded is exempt, as is one being used for hired construction, carpentry, plumbing, landscaping, or moving services actively performed at that property. Recreational vehicles are carved out entirely and governed instead by KCC 9.38.145, which caps RV, boat, and trailer parking on residential streets at 24 hours. City of Kent vehicles, other government vehicles, public utility vehicles, and emergency vehicles are also exempt outright. Separately, KCC 9.38.140 bars parking any unattached trailer or semi-trailer on a city street unless it is hitched to a towing vehicle, with a narrow 24-hour allowance after an accident if red signals are displayed at both ends.

A violation of the large-vehicle ban is a $250 infraction, five times the standard $50 parking fine, and the vehicle can also be impounded. The Kent chief of police may suspend enforcement in writing when doing so serves public health, safety, or welfare, specifying the dates the suspension covers; a suspension of KCC 9.38.130 also suspends related restrictions in KCC 9.38.180(A)(15), (B)(6), (C)(2), and applicable parts of KCC 9.38.020.