(a) Nothing in this subchapter shall be construed to include: (1) (A) Motor vehicles: (i) Employed solely in transporting schoolchildren and teachers to or from school; and (ii) Used in carrying: (a) Set-up houses; (b) Ordinary livestock; (c) Unprocessed fish, including shellfish; (d) Unprocessed agricultural commodities; (e) Baled cotton; (f) Cottonseed; (g) Cottonseed meal; (h) Cottonseed hulls; (i) Cottonseed cake; (j) Rice hulls; (k) Rice bran; (l) Rice mill feed; (m) Rice mill screenings; (n) Soybean meal; and (o) Commercial fertilizer, but not including the component parts used in the manufacture thereof. (B) However, carriers of such exempt commodities and passengers shall be subject to safety of operation and equipment standards provisions prescribed or hereafter prescribed by the State Highway Commission. (C) Additionally, for-hire carriers of such exempt commodities shall file with the commission evidence of security for the protection of the public in the same amount and to the same extent as nonexempt carriers, as provided in § 23-13-227 ; (2) (A) Taxicabs or other motor vehicles performing a bona fide taxicab service. (B) "Bona fide taxicab service", as employed in this section, means and refers only to service rendered by motor-driven vehicles having a seating capacity not in excess of six (6) passengers and used for the transportation of persons for hire, which vehicles are owned and operated by a person, firm, or corporation authorized by the governing authorities of municipalities to conduct a taxicab business over or upon the streets and public ways; (3) Any private carrier of property and motor vehicles employed in the hauling of gravel, rock, dirt, bituminous mix materials, riprap, quarried stone, crushed stone, and similar materials, and any movements and services performed by wreckers and wrecker services. Provided, all of the above private carriers, motor vehicles, and wrecker and wrecker services shall be subject to the provisions prescribed, including all rules made and promulgated pursuant to this subchapter, with respect to safety of operation and equipment standards; (4) Trolley buses operated by electric power or other buses furnishing local passenger transportation similar to street railway service, unless and to the extent that the commission shall from time to time find that such an application is necessary to carry out the policy of this subchapter as to safety of operation or standards of equipment, apply to: (A) (i) The transportation of passengers or property wholly within a municipality or between contiguous municipalities or within a commercial zone, as defined in § 23-13-203 , adjacent to, and commercially a part of, any such municipalities, except when the transportation is under a common control, management, or arrangement for a continuous carriage, or shipment to or from a point outside such municipalities or zone, and provided that the motor carrier engaged in such transportation of passengers over regular or irregular routes is also lawfully engaged in the intrastate transportation of passengers over the entire length of the routes in accordance with the laws of this state. (ii) The rights, duties, and privileges of any motor carrier previously granted a certificate of convenience and necessity by the commission to operate in, through, to, or from municipalities or in, through, to, or from a commercial zone or territory contiguous to a municipality shall not be impaired or abridged by reason of the subsequent annexation of the municipality or territory by another municipality, and any such motor carrier shall remain subject to the exclusive jurisdiction and control of the commission; or (B) The occasional or reciprocal transportation of passengers or property for compensation: (i) By any person not engaged in transportation by motor vehicle as a regular occupation or business, except when such transportation is sold, offered for sale, provided, procured, or furnished or arranged for; (ii) By any person who holds himself or herself or itself out as one who sells or offers for sale transportation wholly or partially subject to this subchapter, or negotiates for, or holds himself or herself or itself out, by solicitation, advertisements, or otherwise, as one who sells, provides, furnishes, contracts, or arranges for such transportation; or (iii) By any person or his or her or its agent, servant, or employee who regularly engages in the exempt transportation of passengers for hire; (5) Motor vehicles controlled and operated by an agricultural cooperative association as defined in § 2-2-101 et seq. and §§ 2-2-201 , 2-2-202 , and 2-2-401 - 2-2-428 or any similar act of another state or by the United States Agricultural Marketing Act, as amended, or by a federation of such cooperative associations, if the federation possesses no greater powers or purposes than cooperative associations so defined; (6) Motor carriers of property, except household goods carriers. Provided, the motor carriers of property shall be subject to all safety of operation and equipment standards provisions prescribed by the commission. Provided, further, all motor carriers of property shall be subject to the provisions of §§ 23-13-252 and 23-13-265 and all rules and regulations made and promulgated by the commission with respect to financial fitness and insurance requirements; (7) (A) The transportation of passengers by private or public motor carrier either under contract or by cooperative agreement with the State of Arkansas when the transportation is provided exclusively in connection with, or as a result of, federally or state-funded assistance programs serving the public need. (B) Provided, the motor carriers shall be subject to the provisions prescribed, including all rules made and promulgated pursuant to this subchapter, with respect to safety of operation and equipment standards; (8) The transportation of passengers in a private vehicle with a maximum seating capacity of fifteen (15) passengers, including the driver, provided the transportation is for the purposes of vanpooling or carpooling; and (9) (A) A commercial motor vehicle operating in intrastate commerce that has a: (i) Gross vehicle weight rating or gross combination weight rating of twenty-six thousand pounds (26,000 lbs.) or less; or (ii) Gross vehicle weight or gross combination weight of twenty-six thousand pounds (26,000 lbs.) or less. (B) Subdivision (a)(9)(A) of this section does not apply to a commercial motor vehicle that is: (i) Designated as transporting hazardous materials under 49 U.S.C. § 5103 , as in effect on January 1, 2021, and is required to be placarded under 49 C.F.R. part 172, subpart F, as in effect on January 1, 2021; or (ii) Designed to transport more than fifteen (15) passengers, including the driver. (b) In addition, the following are declared to be exempt from this subchapter except to the extent that the vehicles transporting the following products shall be subject to the safety and equipment standards of the commission: (1) The transportation of live poultry, unmanufactured products of poultry, and related commodities. Poultry, unmanufactured products of poultry, and related commodities include the following: (A) Additives, such as injected butter, gravy, seasoning, etc., in an amount not in excess of five percent (5%) by weight, sold in or along with uncooked poultry; (B) Advertising matter, in reasonable amounts, transported along with poultry and poultry products; (C) Blood of poultry from which corpuscles have been removed by centrifugal force; (D) Carcasses: (i) Raw, in marble-size chunks; (ii) Cut up, raw; (iii) Cut up, precooked or cooked; (iv) Breaded or battered; (v) Cut up, precooked or cooked, marinated, breaded, or battered; (vi) Deboned, cooked or uncooked; and (vii) Deboned, cooked or uncooked, in rolls or diced; (E) Dinners, cooked; (F) Dressed; (G) Eggs, albumen, liquid; (H) Eggs, albumen, liquid, pasteurized; (I) Eggs, dried; (J) Eggs, frozen; (K) Eggs, liquid, whole or separated; (L) Eggs, oiled; (M) Eggs, omelet mix consisting of fresh broken eggs and milk with minute amounts of salt and pepper and seasoning, packaged; (N) Eggs, powder, dried; (O) Eggs, shelled; (P) Eggs, whites; (Q) Eggs, whole, with added yolks, dried; (R) Eggs, whole, with added yolks; (S) Eggs, whole standardized by substraction of whites; (T) Eggs, yolks, dried; (U) Eggs, yolks, liquid; (V) Eggs, yolks; (W) Fat, as removed from poultry, not cooked; (X) Feathers; (Y) Feathers, ground or feather meal; (Z) Feathers, ground, combined with dehydrated poultry offal; (AA) Offal, including blood and natural by-products of the killing and processing of poultry for market; (BB) Picked; (CC) Rolled in batter but uncooked; (DD) Rolls, containing sectioned and deboned poultry, cooked; (EE) Sticks, cooked; (FF) Stuffed; and (GG) Stuffing, packed with, but not in, bird; (2) The transportation of livestock and poultry feed including all materials or supplementary substances necessary or useful to sustaining the life or promoting the growth of livestock or poultry, if such products, excluding products otherwise exempt under this section, are transported to a site of agricultural production or to a business enterprise engaged in the sale to agricultural producers of goods used in agricultural production; (3) The transportation of sawdust, wood shavings, and wood chips; and (4) The transportation of ethylene glycol antifreeze, gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, kerosene, aviation gasoline, and jet fuel. (c) (1) Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter, the transportation of passengers by motor vehicle shall continue to be regulated by the commission. (2) Provided, a carrier of passengers, which carrier proposes strictly charter services or charter operations for the transportation of passengers, upon application with the commission, shall not be required to prove that the proposed charter services or charter operations are required by the present or future public convenience and necessity.