About
What PitStop is, and how the guides are kept right.
PitStop is a free guide to food truck permits, costs and startup steps, organized by state and county. It exists for the person who is somewhere between “I want to do this” and the first inspection, and who keeps finding fee ranges with no date and no source.
What you will find here
- Permit guides for all 50 states and 20+ cities. Which agency licenses a mobile food unit, what it charges, what the counties and cities add on top, and the order you have to get them in.
- Cost guides. Startup budgets, conversion and build-out quotes, fire suppression, festival math and the industry data behind them.
- Free tools. A startup and profit calculator and printable health inspection checklists in English and Spanish.
How fees are verified
A fee is only as good as the day someone last confirmed it, so each figure in a guide is meant to carry two things: the date it was checked and a link to the agency page it came from. If we could not confirm a figure against an official source, the guide says so rather than quoting a range.
Rules change without much notice. Texas is the clearest recent example: since July 1, 2026 (HB 2844) the state licenses mobile food units through DSHS in three tiers (Type I $309; Type II $618 plus a $400 pre-licensing fee; Type III $876 plus $500), and city health permits for mobile units were abolished, while cities keep fire inspections, zoning and temporary event permits. Our Texas guides were re-checked against dshs.texas.gov on September 8, 2026. Florida issues one statewide DBPR mobile food dispensing vehicle license ($50 application plus $347 a year) under F.S. 509.102, and the guide says exactly that.
When a reader or an agency tells us a figure is out of date, we re-check it at the source and update the guide, its date and its sources block. If you spot one, email support@runpitstop.com.
How the site is paid for
Reading is free and always will be; we do not sell the guides, and there is no account to create. Some guides recommend vendors you will need on the way to opening (insurance and certificates of insurance, business formation, financing, point of sale). If you buy through one of those links, the vendor may pay us a referral fee. It never changes the price you pay, and a recommendation is only placed at the step of the guide where you would actually need that vendor.
Every card that carries a referral link says so on the page. The full policy is in our affiliate disclosure.
Who writes it
Ricky Gutierrez
Founder, PitStop · operator-side consultant, PitStop Ops
Ricky Gutierrez is the founder of PitStop, the free permit, cost and startup guide for people opening a food truck in the United States, and runs PitStop Ops, an operator-side consulting business that works with food truck owners on their numbers and paperwork. He works on the operator side, not as a licensing agency: the guides are built by reading the statutes and fee schedules the agencies publish, dating every figure, and linking each one to the page it came from. He writes about permits, startup costs and the parts of the paperwork that change without notice.
The guides are general information, not legal advice. Confirm any fee with the issuing agency before you pay it.
Permits by state
All 50 states and 20+ cities.
All guides
Permits, costs and startup steps.
Startup calculator
Total the budget before you commit.
Corrections and questions: support@runpitstop.com