Oversize Loads.
Permitted, Escorted, On the Road.
The freight that breaks the legal envelope: over 8 feet 6 inches wide, 13 feet 6 inches tall, or 80,000 pounds. We pull the permits in every state, stage the escorts, survey the route, and tell you the one number that matters, the day it can roll.
Quote Your Oversize Move
What is an oversize load?
An oversize, or over-dimensional, load is any shipment that crosses a legal line on the road: wider than 8 feet 6 inches, taller than 13 feet 6 inches, longer than about 53 feet, or heavier than 80,000 pounds gross. The moment a load passes any one of those, it needs an oversize or overweight permit from every state it travels through, and often pilot cars, a route survey, and travel locked to daylight or weekday windows.
Oversized is a logistics problem, not a driving problem. The miles are the easy part. The lead time lives in the permits, the escorts, and the route survey, and it climbs fast as the load gets wider, taller, and heavier. AFX runs a 50-state permitting desk in-house, stages the escorts, surveys the route before dispatch, and gives you the earliest roll date up front, so the move is planned to the foot before a wheel turns.
Your load is oversized when:
- ✓It crosses a legal line: over 8 ft 6 in wide, 13 ft 6 in tall, ~53 ft long, or 80,000 lb gross
- ✓The move needs an oversize or overweight permit from one or more state DOTs
- ✓Pilot cars, a high-pole car, or a police escort are required by width, height, or length
- ✓A route survey is needed to clear bridges, overhead wires, turns, or grades
- ✓Travel is locked to daylight, weekday, or curfew windows because of the dimensions
- ✓The lead time is driven by permits and escorts, not by the miles
What does this move take, and when can it roll?
Every oversize move comes down to one anxious question: when will it actually be on the road? The answer is not the miles. It is how many state permits have to issue, what escorts the width and height require, whether the route needs a survey, and which days the load is even allowed to travel.
Enter the dimensions and the states crossed. The planner returns the permit count, the escort configuration, the travel-window restrictions, the route-survey call, and the earliest roll date in business days. It is the red tape, made visible, before you commit a dollar.
Permit, Escort & Lead-Time Planner
The dimensions and the route in, the move plan out: permits, escorts, restrictions, and the day it can roll.
Multi-State OD3 state permits, no escort. The lead time lives in the slowest state permit desk, so bring us in early.
A planning estimate using representative multi-state thresholds. Every state DOT writes its own escort, restriction, and superload rules, and a separate overweight permit may apply, so the permit count, escorts, and lead time are confirmed per state before dispatch.
- 1 pilot carWidth > 12′
- Front + rearWidth ≥ 14′
- Height-pole carHeight > 14′6″
- Police escort> 16′ or > 200k lb
- Daylight only> 10′ wide
- Route survey≥ 14′, over-height
Seven Trailers for the Loads Nothing Else Carries
Oversize and heavy-haul is a ladder of trailers, each lower, longer, or stronger than the last. The right one is set by your load height, length, and weight.
RGN / Lowboy
A detachable gooseneck drops to an 18 to 24 inch well, so tall, heavy machinery drives or rolls on and still clears bridges. 40,000 to 80,000 lbs.
Double-Drop
Two deck drops create a low center well for over-height cargo a flatbed or step-deck cannot clear. The well runs roughly 25 to 29 feet.
Stretch / Extendable
The well or deck telescopes out to carry over-length loads like bridge beams and wind-tower sections without illegal overhang.
Multi-Axle
Added axles, jeeps, and boosters spread gross weight over more ground to satisfy axle limits and the bridge formula. 80,000 to 200,000+ lbs.
Perimeter
The frame wraps around the cargo so a tall load sits inside the trailer perimeter, lowering overall height. Used for large transformers and vessels.
Dual-Lane
Two parallel multi-axle lines under one platform spread extreme weight across two travel lanes. Power-plant transformers and reactors of several hundred tons.
Schnabel
The cargo becomes a structural part of the trailer, suspended between two hydraulic ends. For the heaviest vessels and generators, 50 to 400 tons.
Built to Scale.
Proven to Deliver.
From Dimensions to Roll Date in Four Steps
Classify It
Dimensions, weight, and the states on the route in. We flag every axis that is over legal, classify the move as single-trip, multi-state, or superload, and price it all-in before anything moves.
Permit It
We pull oversize and overweight permits with every state DOT on the route, run the route survey for bridges, wires, and turns, and time each permit to the move so nothing expires or sits pending.
Stage It
Pilot cars, high-pole cars, and police are booked to the route and the travel windows. The load is matched to the right trailer, from RGN to multi-axle, and secured to engineering standards.
Roll It
Escorts take position, the route is followed to the foot under live GPS, and the load clears every scale and checkpoint it meets. One coordinator owns it from first measurement to final set-down.
Where Your Move Sits on the Heavy-Haul Ladder
The further past the legal line a load goes, the more permits, escorts, and lead time it takes. Here is how the four tiers compare, and where oversized starts.
| Criteria | Step Deck | Single-Trip | Multi-State OD | Superload |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trigger | ≤ 8′6″ / ≤ 13′6″ / ≤ 80k | Over legal, 1 state | Over legal, 2+ states | > 16′ wide or > 200k lb |
| Permits | None | 1 state permit | One per state | Per-state + engineering |
| Escorts | None | None to 1 pilot car | Front, rear, and pole as required | Police + front + rear + pole |
| Route survey | Not needed | Rarely | When wide or over-height | Always, with bridge analysis |
| Travel windows | Any day, any hour | Daylight, holiday curfew | Daylight, weekday, curfew | Daylight, weekday, holiday, escorted |
| Lead time | 1 to 2 days | 2 to 4 days | 1 to 2 weeks | 3 to 6+ weeks |
| Best when | Tall but legal, no permit | One state, mildly over | Wide or heavy across states | Beyond a single trailer's limits |
Just tall but still legal? A step deck is cheaper and faster. An engineered, multi-piece project that must land in sequence? See specialized. Everything that breaks the legal envelope and needs a permit lives here.
How Long Until It Can Roll?
Transit is the easy part. The lead time lives in the permits, the route survey, and the escorts. The bigger the load, the earlier the conversation starts.
On a deadline? Bring us in early. The sooner permits and the route survey start, the more routing and capacity options stay open, and the lower the all-in cost.
The Move That
Has to Clear.
An oversize load that rolls on the wrong permit gets stranded at a state line, racking up demurrage while the clock runs. We engineer the move so the only outcome is the load, on the road, cleared through every checkpoint it meets.
Heavy-Haul Capacity Where You Build
Daily oversize and heavy-haul coverage in all 50 states, with deep capacity in the busiest markets.
Oversize freight by industry
The Heavy-Haul Playbook
Three guides for shippers moving the loads that need a permit, not just a truck.
Where the Open Deck Ends
Deck height decides what clears legal. Where a flatbed stops, a step deck starts, and where the permit begins.
Read the guide BillingPermits & Escorts, as Line Items
What a state permit, a pilot car, and a route survey actually cost, and why heavy haul is priced per move.
Read the guide PlanningLead Time Is the Cheapest Lever
In heavy haul, booking early keeps permits, escorts, and equipment from costing more than they have to.
Read the guideOversize Load & Heavy-Haul FAQs
A load is oversize, or over-dimensional, the moment it crosses a legal line on any axis: wider than 8 feet 6 inches, taller than 13 feet 6 inches, longer than about 53 feet, or heavier than 80,000 pounds gross. Width is the one federal constant at 102 inches in every state; height, length, and weight limits move at the state line. Cross any of them and the load needs an oversize or overweight permit in every state it travels through, and often escorts and a route survey on top.
As a working baseline: 8 feet 6 inches wide, 13 feet 6 inches tall, roughly 53 feet long, and 80,000 pounds gross. Width is fixed at 102 inches nationwide, while legal height runs 13 feet 6 inches in the East up to 14 feet 6 inches across much of the West, and length and weight allowances vary by state. Anything beyond these is permitted freight, and the further past the line it goes, the more escorts, surveys, and lead time the move takes.
It varies by state and by load. Routine single-trip oversize permits commonly run about 15 to 100 dollars per state, while engineered superloads that need bridge analysis can run several hundred to a couple thousand dollars per state. A multi-state move pays for a permit in each state it crosses. We pull every permit in-house and fold the all-in cost, permits, escorts, and any survey, into one quote before the move.
It depends on the state, but as a conservative cross-country rule: a load wider than about 12 feet needs at least one pilot car, 14 feet or wider usually needs two, one front and one rear, and a load over 14 feet 6 inches tall needs a high-pole car to check overhead clearances. Very wide or very heavy superloads add a police escort. The exact triggers differ in every state, so we map the escort plan for the whole route, not one state at a time.
A superload is an oversize load big or heavy enough to need engineering beyond a standard permit. Common triggers are about 16 feet wide, 16 feet tall, 120 feet or longer, or roughly 200,000 pounds gross, though some states declare a superload at lower weights or by axle loading. Superloads require an engineered route survey, structural review of bridges, utility and traffic-signal coordination, police escorts, and weeks of lead time. AFX manages the full superload process end to end.
Directionally, a clean single-state single-trip permit often issues in about 1 to 3 business days, some states same day. Add roughly 1 to 3 days for each additional state, several days for a physical route survey, and a true superload with bridge analysis and utility coordination runs about 2 to 6 weeks per state. Our planner above turns your dimensions and route into an estimated earliest roll date in business days. Lead time is the cheapest lever in heavy haul, so the earlier we start, the better.
We do. AFX acquires oversize and overweight permits in-house, directly with the DOT in every state on your route, and tracks each one to approval. We also coordinate the route survey, the pilot cars, the high-pole car, and any police escort, and we time each permit to the move so nothing expires or sits pending. You approve the plan; we handle the paperwork and the field staging.
Usually not, once a permit is in play. Most states bar oversize travel after dark above roughly 10 to 12 feet wide or over height, restrict very wide and superloads to weekdays, and curfew oversize moves on major holidays and through metro rush hours. Those windows are city and corridor specific, and metro curfews can be stricter than statewide rules. We build the schedule around the legal travel windows on your exact route so the load is not sitting idle at a curfew.
Both sit low so tall, heavy machinery clears bridges, and the term often overlaps. A lowboy has a fixed low deck; an RGN, or removable gooseneck, detaches at the front so equipment can drive straight on. From there the fleet climbs: double-drops for over-height cargo, stretch and extendable trailers for over-length beams and tower sections, multi-axle setups that spread 80,000 to 200,000-plus pounds, and dual-lane and Schnabel rigs for power transformers and vessels of several hundred tons. We match the trailer to your load height, length, and weight.