Let's talk about something that seems easy but can easily trip up your operations if you miss something. Weight Limits.
Weight limits for trucks are governed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) to ensure safe weight limits for Interstate travel. In addition to this, individual States set limits for their roadways.
Compliance on these rules is pretty simple, IF you are running within a state or across a smaller group of states with similar limits. However, in regions like New England, its a lot less likely you're within one state (versus say, running trucks in Texas) and so it becomes very important to make sure you know what the rules are where, and which of your units need what permits to be in compliance.
This is something that comes up for us a lot, as we are running trucks across several state lines, and it comes up a lot for our customers as well, partly because the states in the region are smaller, and they can have vastly different rules on weights and permitting. So we thought it would be good to share a chart of the limits we see in the region for you to check against. There are also links to broader resources below if you are out of a different part of the country (or if youre just curious about how complicated it all gets nationwide :) )
This is the chart we use in our Safety Department. So basically if you are adding a unit in MA that will be running MA, NH, ME your process for permitting and the limits will be different than a unit running NY to CT.
(Feel free to snag this chart for your own use, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions on it.)
If you need more states or more info, this is a great reference chart by State by CargoAgents. net: Road Weight & Size Limitations .. most states rules reference the Federal Bridge formula to some extent, a breakdown of that and the accompanying detail from the DOT & Congress is available here: Federal Bridge Weight (<-- this is a very very detailed breakdown, more than you would ever want to know, but a lot of it is helpful)
