Is an employer in FL state required to provide workers compensation for employees

The two gentlemen above me are half right, but they're still wrong. I'm a workers' comp insurance Underwriter in the state of Florida.

It's true that non-construction companies do not need to carry workers' comp if you have 3 employees or less , including yourself. You can exclude yourself, generally by:
A) Starting as a corporation and filing an exemption for yourself with the state
B) Start as an LLC
C) Start as a sole proprietorship

In any of these cases, you will generally not by included in the three max employees. I say "generally" because the rules for LLCs and sole proprietorships can vary from carrier to carrier. The vast majority of the time, though, carriers will consider you automatically excluded from coverage in either of those cases.

And, despite what the previous gentleman said about it being tough to determine what is and isn't a "construction" risk. That's false. It's incredibly easy. NCCI mandates what class codes (each type of work is assigned a 4 digit code) are construction and which are non. It's extremely cut and dry. If all you're doing is trucking, that is a non-construction risk, so you would not need WC coverage unless you hired more than 3 people, or hired 3 people and didn't exclude yourself. Link the the form below:

http://www.ncci.com/documents/forms_ccpap_fl.pdf

If you're a concrete trucker, general freight trucker, specialized frieght trucker of motor vehicle tower, your class code would be 7219, which as you can see from the link is not considered a construction code by NCCI, so you'd be just fine. Hire a 4th employee, though, and it's all over. Better off not hiring any close friends. You may have to lay them off and go with leased employees so you can get insurance. It's nearly impossible for a small trucking operation with no prior WC coverage to get insured. I know I wouldn't insure you :)

Hope this helps. Have a nice day :)