St. Charles County, MO Parking Rules: Loading Zones (2026)

Section 405.440(B) defines a loading space by what a truck actually needs, not by a stripe on a plan. The space exists for the standing, loading, and unloading of trucks, which means it must hold a stopped vehicle for the length of a delivery rather than simply let one pull past.

The four dimensions work together. The minimum area is 600 square feet, the minimum width is 12 feet, and the minimum depth is 50 feet. Those figures are not independent: 12 feet by 50 feet comes to exactly the 600 square foot minimum, so a compliant space is essentially a full truck berth and cannot be met by a wide but shallow bay or a long but narrow one. The 14 foot vertical clearance then governs anything overhead. A canopy, a parking deck soffit, a sign structure, or a door header lower than 14 feet disqualifies the space even where the paved footprint is the right size.

Location is the other half of the standard. The space must be within the main building or on the same lot as the use it serves. A developer cannot satisfy the requirement by pointing at a public street, an alley, a shared drive aisle, or a neighboring parcel. Keeping the berth on site is what stops delivery trucks from stopping in travel lanes while they unload.

How many berths a development needs is set separately by Section 405.465, which scales the count to building floor area. The smallest commercial and industrial buildings, those under 5,000 square feet, require no dedicated off-street loading space at all, and additional berths are required as floor area grows. The Division of Planning and Zoning applies both sections during site plan review in unincorporated St. Charles County, so loading layout is settled before construction rather than after a truck starts blocking a road.