Commercial vehicles

There's no federal or state rule to check first

Some vehicle-adjacent topics have a clear outside authority. A satellite dish has the FCC's OTARD rule. The U.S. flag has a federal statute. Commercial vehicles have neither. No federal statute addresses them, and no general, reliably consistent state-law layer covers them either.

That matters because it changes where you start. For a satellite dish, you'd check federal law first. For a commercial vehicle, there's nothing above your own community's paperwork to check, you go straight to the Declaration, Bylaws, and Rules, in that order of authority.

What actually decides it: your own documents, and maybe your city

Because there's no external definition of "commercial vehicle," your association's own definition controls, and definitions vary widely: some documents key off vehicle type, some off visible signage or ladder racks, some off weight or trailer attachments. If your rules don't define the term precisely, an owner can reasonably argue it's ambiguous. Read the definition before you enforce it, not after.

Local zoning ordinances sometimes separately restrict where commercial vehicles may park in a residential district, independent of anything in your governing documents. Check your municipal code, not just your CC&Rs.

If enforcement means towing a vehicle, that's a separate legal question governed by your state's towing statute, not by the commercial-vehicle rule itself. See Towing before you authorize one.

Adding a restriction that isn't there yet

If your current documents are silent on commercial vehicles and the board wants to add a restriction, be careful how you get there. In Arizona, the state Supreme Court held that a board cannot use a general amendment power to create an entirely new category of restriction the original Declaration gave no notice of (Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA, LLC). Whether the same limit applies in your state, and how far it reaches, is not settled everywhere, check with counsel before amending.