Motor carrier classes by state
Indiana does not give a dump truck one weight limit. It runs two calculations against the same vehicle — the modern bridge formula and a preserved 1975 schedule — and provides that the greater of the two applies, except on a highway the state has designated as heavy duty, where the older alternative switches off. Knowing which calculation a truck is operating under is the whole exercise here.
General dump and aggregate exposures — frequency, off-highway operation, the hoist and body damage that outruns a scheduled value — are handled on the dump trucking insurance page. Indiana’s own contribution is a weight regime that refuses to resolve into a single number.
What Indiana contributes is a weight regime with more than one rulebook running concurrently, a permitting scheme that rations capacity by a measured unit of pavement damage rather than by a flat fee, machinery split across two state departments, and its heaviest financial penalties aimed at the carrier rather than at the driver.
One warning has to come before the law rather than after it. Indiana’s own agency summary of its size and weight law and the codified Indiana Code do not agree with each other in several places, including on section numbers and on a headline weight figure that does not appear in the statute at all. Everything here is taken from the codified text, and where the two diverge that is said out loud in the last section.
The codified source throughout is Indiana Code Title 9 (Motor Vehicles), 2022 edition, published on the state’s own in.gov host, whose every page carries the running footer “Indiana Code 2022” and whose document properties record a creation date of 8 June 2022. Requests for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions on the same path all return 404. It is the most recent codified Indiana primary text reachable by that route rather than a statement of the current code, and amendments after mid-2022 are not reflected. That qualification travels with every figure below.
Running Indiana aggregate above 80,000 pounds? Send the permit type alongside the routes — Indiana’s divisible-load permit is valid only on the state highway system and a route deviation is itself a penalty event.
Ask for an Indiana dump quote
IC 9-20-4-1(a) states the modern schedule. Gross weight on a group of two or more consecutive axles is produced by the bridge formula written out in full in the statute, subject to an 80,000-pound overall ceiling and to the familiar carve-out letting two consecutive tandem sets reach 34,000 pounds apiece once they are spread far enough apart. A tandem axle group is capped at 34,000 pounds total and 20,000 pounds on an individual axle within it, and wheel weight at 800 pounds per inch width of tire, “measured between the flanges of the rim,” or an axle weight of 20,000 pounds.
Subsection (c) then supplies a parallel and older set of numbers, and states the relationship between the two in the statute’s own words: “The greater of the weight limits imposed under subsection (a) or this subsection applies to vehicles operated upon a highway.” The preserved limits are those in effect on January 4, 1975 — total gross weight not exceeding 73,280 pounds, tandem axle group weight not exceeding 16,000 pounds for each axle of a tandem assembly, and a wheel weight of 800 pounds per inch of tire width or an axle weight not greater than 18,000 pounds.
That resolves what otherwise looks like a contradiction in Indiana’s numbers. Both an 18,000-pound and a 20,000-pound axle figure correctly describe Indiana: 20,000 pounds under the ordinary schedule, 18,000 pounds as the alternative axle ceiling inside the preserved calculation. A short-wheelbase configuration the formula would penalize takes the older result instead, and no election is required — the greater limit simply applies.
There is a scope condition on the alternative that does not appear in the state’s agency summary at all. Subsection (c) preserves those limits only “for any highway that is not designated as a heavy duty highway under IC 9-20-5.” On a designated heavy duty highway the older calculation is unavailable and the ceilings are the ones INDOT fixes for that road. Chapter 5 requires INDOT to adopt rules under IC 4-22-2 to designate such highways, bars designation unless it finds the road so constructed and maintainable, or in such condition, that heavy duty use “will not materially decrease or contribute materially to the decrease of the ordinary useful life of the highway,” and requires a periodically published map of every designated highway.
Two allowances sit on top of the schedule: under IC 9-20-4-1(b)(5) a heavy-duty vehicle with an auxiliary power unit gains 400 pounds, and under (b)(6) a vehicle using natural gas as a motor fuel gains 2,000. A fourth parallel regime applies on toll roads, where under (b)(4) vehicles are subject to INDOT rules adopted under IC 8-15-2 and not to subsection (a) at all.
Indiana registers commercial vehicles on a weight the applicant declares, and the statute is unusually direct about what that declaration does. IC 9-20-4-3(a): “The gross weight declared by an applicant in an application for registration under this title determines and fixes the limit of the load, including the unladen weight of the vehicle or combination of vehicles fully equipped for service, that may be transported.” Carrying above that declared limit exposes the person to the penalty provisions of the title, to revocation of the vehicle’s license, or to both.
That declaration is a ceiling the operator purchases, not a permission that lifts the statutory limits. Declaring a higher registered weight does not raise the lawful axle, tandem or bridge-formula figures, and declaring a lower one does not lower them; it fixes what that particular vehicle may lawfully carry within them. An Indiana file therefore has two numbers per unit that must both be right, and they answer different questions.
Subsection (b) contains a tolerance that is drafted as a concession to instrumentation rather than to loading practice: “Because of the various types of scales used and the variance in scale weights, a penalty may not be assessed if the actual scale weight of a vehicle or combination of vehicles with load does not exceed one and one-half percent (1 1/2%) of the registered weight of the vehicle or combination of vehicles, including load.” It is measured against the registered weight, not against the statutory limits.
The consequence of exceeding the declaration is a Class C infraction plus a payment: under subsection (c) the person must pay the difference between the registration fee paid and the fee for registration plus a maximum load equal to the excess being carried, and until that is paid the transporting vehicle may not be moved. The chapter is administered by the department of state revenue under IC 9-20-4-4 rather than by the transportation department.
Indiana operates an affirmative overweight divisible load permit program, added by P.L.179-2021 and therefore recent in the 2022 codification. It is commodity-agnostic, so an aggregate hauler qualifies on the same terms as anyone else. IC 9-13-2-120.7 defines an overweight divisible load as a tractor-semitrailer and load that can be traditionally separated or reduced to meet the regulatory weight limits, that meets the other height, length and width requirements, and whose gross vehicle weight is more than 80,000 but not more than 120,000 pounds — a band IC 9-20-6-2.2(g) restates as the permit’s own ceiling.
The rationing mechanic is the distinctive part, and it is built on a measured unit rather than on a fee tier. IC 9-20-6-2.2(b) defines “equivalent single axle load” as “the known quantifiable and standardized amount of damage to highway pavement structures equivalent to one (1) pass of a single eighteen thousand (18,000) pound dual tire axle, with all four (4) tires on the axle inflated to one hundred ten (110) pounds per square inch.” Subsection (i) then caps supply against that unit: INDOT may not issue more than 8,500 single trip permits annually for applicants with a total equivalent single axle load calculation of more than 2.40 equivalent single axle load credit. Subsection (j) grandfathers shippers and carriers that obtained permits before January 1, 2021 out of both that cap and the weight limit, and subsection (l) lets the department limit the number of permits issued to any one applicant.
Jurisdictional scope is drawn sharply and matters operationally. Under subsection (c) a permit “does not apply to a highway under a local authority’s jurisdiction,” and under subsection (e) it may be used “only on designated highways within the state highway system, avoiding highways under a local authority’s jurisdiction.” Subsection (f) makes route compliance an enforcement matter rather than a courtesy: where the department designates a route, “a deviation from that route constitutes a violation subject to a civil penalty under IC 9-20-18-14.5.” Subsection (n) adds a suspension trigger — INDOT may suspend the permitting altogether on observing an unusual increase in infrastructure damage on a permitted route or in accidents associated with overweight divisible loads. The local counterpart at IC 9-20-6-2.5 lets an authority responsible for the repair and maintenance of a state highway, interstate highway or local street grant its own equivalent permit on written application and good cause shown, with the same route-deviation liability.
No fee figure for this program is stated here, and the reason is in the statute. Subsection (h) directed a recalculation of annual and trip permit fees keyed to a named Joint Transportation Research Program publication, and subsection (m) commits the issuance, administration, fee structure and calculation of equivalent single axle load values to rules adopted under IC 4-22-2. IC 9-20-1-5 separately directs INDOT to adopt emergency rules for the fee structure. The amounts live in rules rather than in the chapter, and quoting a figure from the chapter would misstate where the price is set.
Placing an Indiana aggregate fleet? Send the registrations with their declared weights and the permits with their designated routes — in Indiana those two documents answer different questions and both have to be right.
Indiana splits its size and weight machinery between two departments, and getting the split right matters when a file has to show who issued what. The permits sit with INDOT: IC 9-20-6-2.2(d) has the department granting the overweight divisible load permit, and IC 9-20-6-13 fixes the Chapter 6 fees for exceeding the legal length, width or height — $20 for an ordinary permit, $30 to exceed 95 feet overall length, 148 inches overall width or the height limit, $100 for the 90-day permit and $405 for the one-year permit. The money and the penalty sit elsewhere: the department of state revenue administers the general weight chapter under IC 9-20-4-4 and, under IC 9-20-18-14.5, assesses the civil penalties “in accordance with the procedures in IC 6-8.1-5-1.” Indiana’s own agency summary states flatly that a permit beyond the maximum weights “has to be obtained from the Indiana Department of Revenue,” which is not what the codified chapter says; the code describes a split, and this page follows the code.
Those civil penalties are assessed on the carrier rather than on the driver, which is the point most worth carrying into an underwriting conversation. IC 9-20-18-14.5(a) provides that a penalty “is imposed on the carrier transporting the vehicle or load,” is deposited in the motor carrier regulation fund established by IC 8-2.1-23-1, and is “in addition to any fees or fines imposed by a court.” The tiers escalate by what went wrong: not more than $1,000 for a first violation of a permit and $1,500 for each subsequent one; not more than $5,000 where a required permit was not obtained, “for each violation described in an Indiana state police vehicle examination report”; and not more than $10,000 per issued report where the operation exceeded the limits and “no permit is available to allow for such excess weight or dimension.” Assessment is barred more than one year after notification, and a protest and hearing right is preserved.
Ahead of all of that sits a financial-responsibility gate, drafted in mandatory form. IC 9-20-6-10: “Before a permit is issued under this article, an applicant must satisfy the officer or body issuing the permit of the applicant’s responsibility to respond in damages for damage to the highway or bridge or furnish satisfactory bond or other security to the satisfaction of the issuing officer or body.” The applicant either demonstrates the capacity to answer for road damage or posts security, and the satisfaction standard belongs to the issuing officer. Holding the permit does not discharge the underlying exposure: IC 9-20-6-11(c)(1) states that issuance “does not relieve the responsibility for damages to a highway imposed by this article.”
At the roadside the instrument is detention rather than a citation alone. Under IC 9-20-18-3, a vehicle apprehended over a limitation in IC 9-20-4, IC 9-20-5 or IC 9-20-11 “shall be detained until the weight of the vehicle or combination of vehicles is reduced or distributed to comply with the limitation,” and is kept in the custody of the apprehending officer. A bond may be posted in court and the vehicle released once the weight is lawful; absent one the court may order impoundment. IC 9-20-18-5 bars impounding part of the cargo, and IC 9-20-18-6 requires the driver to notify the shipper or any person with a monetary interest of the cargo’s location. Road damage reaches a program as third-party property damage, so the live question is whether the trucking auto liability or the general liability wording is meant to respond; a detained load raises a separate one that a motor truck cargo form may or may not answer.
Indiana’s local layer is delegated and then bounded, and one of the bounds is a pre-emption most states do not write. IC 9-20-6-14: “Except as authorized by this chapter or otherwise expressly authorized by statute, a local authority may not adopt or enforce an ordinance that requires an operator of a commercial motor vehicle to obtain a permit from the local authority to operate the commercial motor vehicle within the jurisdiction of the local authority.” A city cannot layer its own commercial-vehicle permit on top of the state scheme.
What a local authority can do is restrict. IC 9-20-1-3(a) lets local authorities, over highways under their jurisdiction and excluding the state highway system, prohibit operation or impose weight restrictions by ordinance, capped at ninety days across a single year, where climatic conditions would otherwise see the road seriously damaged or destroyed; subsection (c) adds a separate and unbounded power to prohibit trucks or impose weight, size or use limitations on designated highways. Both are conditioned on signage in terms — under subsection (b) signs must be erected and maintained at each end of the affected part and at intersecting highways, and “the ordinance may not be enforced until the signs are erected and maintained.” INDOT holds the same authority over the state system under subsection (d), exercised by executive order and equally unenforceable until signs are up, and subsection (e) lets the commissioner designate such an order an emergency rule under IC 4-22-2-37.1.
IC 9-20-4-1(b)(3) closes the hierarchy from the other end: the general schedule does not apply to any highway, road, street or bridge for which a lesser weight limit is imposed under IC 9-20-1-3 or IC 9-20-7-2, and the same subdivision lets a local authority designate its own road as a heavy duty highway subject to the Chapter 5 limits.
The structure-specific layer contains a mechanic worth stating plainly. Under IC 9-20-7-2, INDOT or a local authority charged with the repair or maintenance of a bridge, causeway or viaduct may reduce the gross load weight allowed on the structure below the maximum prescribed in IC 9-20-4-1 and IC 9-20-5 where it determines the maximum is greater than the structure can sustain without serious damage or with safety to the vehicle. IC 9-20-7-3 then provides that the order, resolution or ordinance “shall fix the gross weight allowed in percentage or maximum load prescribed in IC 9-20-4-1 and IC 9-20-5.” Indiana expressly authorizes a posting expressed as a percentage of the ordinary limit rather than as a tonnage figure — which is the lawful origin of percentage-style postings, and also why a percentage quoted without a source should be treated with suspicion: the statute authorizes the form and fixes no number, no season and no calendar. The same section requires signs posted conspicuously at each end of the structure, “legible from a distance of fifty (50) feet,” and maintained while the reduction is in force.
Indiana’s construction relief is genuinely broad on its face and considerably narrower once read to the end. IC 9-20-2-1(a) provides that except as provided in subsections (b) and (c), the article does not apply to a vehicle “(1) while engaged in the construction of highways; and (2) when the movement of the vehicle is confined wholly to highways or roads or sections of highways or roads that are under construction and not yet open to unlimited public use.” The two conditions are conjunctive in the statute’s own structure, and the operative phrase is “not yet open to unlimited public use” rather than simply closed to the public.
Subsection (b) is the part that changes the analysis, and it does not appear in the state’s agency summary. If the authority having jurisdiction over the construction of the public highway gives written notice to the owner or operator that the vehicle may not be operated in violation of the article without a permit issued by that authority, the owner or operator must obtain the permit before operating within the highway construction area. Subsection (c) supplies the consequence: where written notice has been given and no permit obtained, the article applies to that vehicle while engaged in the construction of a public highway.
The exemption is therefore defeasible at the election of the contracting authority, by a document. Subsection (d) lists the forms that notice may take — a letter, a specifications document, a contract document, a written agreement, or any written document pertaining to the construction work being performed by the owner or operator. For a contractor’s aggregate truck, that means the project paperwork can be the thing that puts the truck back inside the weight regime, and it will not look like a regulatory notice when it arrives.
A separate and differently drafted exemption sits at IC 9-20-2-2(b)(1): except for interstate highway travel, the article does not apply to “Machinery or equipment used in highway construction or maintenance by the Indiana department of transportation, counties, or municipalities.” That one turns on who the equipment is used by and names all three levels of road authority, rather than on where the vehicle operates. IC 9-20-2-3 separately exempts movement of a disabled vehicle or combination for a distance not exceeding fifty highway miles by a registered recovery vehicle.
Indiana’s load rules are two provisions in different articles, and neither is a covering mandate. The escape prohibition is IC 9-21-8-48, quoted in full: “A vehicle, except: (1) a vehicle containing poultry or livestock being transported to market; or (2) a highway maintenance vehicle engaged in spreading sand or deicing chemicals; may not be driven or moved on a highway if the vehicle’s contents are dripping, sifting, leaking, or otherwise escaping from the vehicle.” It is condition-based rather than equipment-based — it bites when contents are actually escaping, and it names no commodity. Penalties run through IC 9-21-8-49: a Class C infraction, rising to a Class A infraction where the violation results in bodily injury to a person.
The securement provision is IC 9-20-18-14, and it opens with a carve-out that does most of the work for a dump body. Subsection (a): “This section does not apply to a vehicle that has sides that extend above the load unless the load is not safely secured.” A sided dump body loaded below its sideboards is outside the section unless the load is unsecured. Subsection (b) then reaches vehicles carrying “logs, lumber, pipe, poles, tanks, boilers, or similar objects” and requires fastening by metal chains, wire cables, steel strapping, or logistic webbing of synthetic fibers, identified as to strength and equipped with compatible hardware, of sufficient strength to hold the load in place under ordinary traffic or road conditions — with a load or part of a load more than ten feet in length requiring at least three such devices, one near each end and the other at the approximate center.
On covering, the scope of the reading should be stated with the reading. No cover, tarp, freeboard, tailgate or body-raised interlock requirement appears anywhere in Indiana Code Title 9 (2022 edition). That is drawn from a scan of the complete title as extracted from the state-published PDF — roughly 2.36 million characters across 865 pages — in which “sifting” returns exactly one hit, at IC 9-21-8-48, and “freeboard,” “loose material” and “spilling” return none. The single occurrence of “tarpaulin” in the title concerns an abandoned vehicle covered by a tarpaulin and has nothing to do with loads.
That denominator is the whole title and no more. It is not a statement about Title 8, about the Indiana Administrative Code, or about any local ordinance, and because the codified text available by this route is the 2022 edition it does not speak to amendments after mid-2022. What it does establish is that an Indiana operator who tarps aggregate is doing so as a matter of practice, contract or loss experience rather than because Title 9 tells them to — and that IC 9-21-8-48 still bites if material comes out, regardless of whether a cover was required.
Indiana does differentiate weight by body type, but only once, and not for aggregate. IC 9-20-11-1 applies Chapter 11 to a truck, truck-trailer combination or truck-wagon combination that is either a municipal waste collection and transportation vehicle specially designed and equipped with a self-compactor or detachable container, used exclusively for garbage, refuse or recycling operations and laden with garbage, refuse or recyclables, or a disposal plant transporting vehicle certified under IC 15-17-11 laden with dead animals or animal parts.
For those vehicles IC 9-20-11-2 permits, except on an interstate highway, a gross weight of not more than 24,000 pounds on a single axle and 42,000 pounds on a tandem axle group — 4,000 and 8,000 pounds respectively above the ordinary figures. The allowance is laden-only: IC 9-20-11-3 requires that when unladen, such a vehicle “must comply with the axle limitations applicable to all other trucks.” It does not reach wheel weights, because IC 9-20-11-4 provides that the chapter does not exempt those vehicles from the wheel weight limitations imposed by IC 9-20-4-1(c). IC 9-20-11-5 caps a refuse-operation truck-trailer or truck-wagon combination and its load at sixty-eight feet in intrastate transportation.
The commodity tolerance is the other place Indiana differentiates, and the code draws it more precisely than the state’s summary does. IC 9-20-4-2(a) splits into two subdivisions with different scopes: farm commodities carried from the place of production to the first point of delivery where the commodities are weighed get ten percent, but only against the gross weight limit; logs, wood chips, bark and sawdust get ten percent against either the gross weight limit or the axle weight limit. The statutory test for the first is where the commodities are weighed, not where title transfers. Subsection (c) removes the tolerance entirely where a bridge or highway-section limit is imposed under IC 9-20-1-3, or on any part of an interstate highway.
Aggregate is on neither list, and the absence has a denominator behind it. Across the whole of Indiana Code Title 9 in the 2022 edition, “gravel” does not appear at all, “quarry” does not appear at all, and the single occurrence of “aggregate” is unrelated to hauling — it describes commercial vehicle registration applications made on an aggregate basis. An Indiana aggregate hauler is governed by the general schedule, the formula, the preserved 1975 alternative and the heavy duty designation scheme, with no commodity relief available within that title. That Indiana built a body-type weight class for refuse and did not build one for aggregate is the finding, and it survives the primary reading.
An Indiana file has one hazard that has nothing to do with the trucks. The most widely circulated statement of Indiana size and weight law is the state police summary of Title 9, Article 20, and in several places it does not match the codified text — so a compliance position built from the summary alone rests on figures and citations the statute does not carry.
The clearest instance is a weight number. The summary publishes a flat maximum tri-axle weight, and no such figure appears anywhere in Indiana Code Title 9. A full-text scan of the 2022 edition for that quantity returns occurrences only as a population threshold in the speed limit provisions and as dollar amounts in the financial responsibility articles — never as a vehicle weight. The only tri-axle reference in the entire title is definitional, at IC 9-13-2-177, providing that for the purpose of enforcing the single axle weight limitation the third axle of a tri-axle group is treated as a single axle if it is independently suspended. This page therefore states no flat tri-axle weight figure for Indiana, and deliberately does not repeat the circulated one, because the statute resolves tri-axle groups through the formula and that definitional rule rather than through a number.
The citation defects run the same way. The summary attributes bridge and highway-section weight limits to IC 9-20-1-4; that section is headed “Violation of restrictions; Class C infraction; point system” and its entire body makes a violation of the chapter a Class C infraction. The imposing section is IC 9-20-1-3, as IC 9-20-4-2(c)(1) itself confirms by naming it. The summary attributes wheel weight limitations to IC 9-20-11-4, which is the section that denies the exemption rather than imposes the limits — those sit in IC 9-20-4-1(c). And it cites the disposal plant certification to IC 15-2.1-16, where IC 9-20-11-1(2) reads IC 15-17-11.
None of that makes the summary useless, and the substance of its hierarchy point survives intact: a posted section limit does defeat the ten percent commodity tolerance. It does mean an Indiana submission should be reconciled against the code. The list is short — the declared registered weight against operating practice, the permit type against the routes it is valid on, the project paperwork for any written notice that has quietly canceled a construction exemption, and the carrier entity named on any permit against the entity that would actually be assessed under IC 9-20-18-14.5. A fleet that also floats its own machines meets the Chapter 6 track, and oversized and overweight trucking insurance stops being a separate conversation; the configuration record is also what a physical damage schedule should be built from.
The state minimum is a licensing threshold. The program an operator actually needs is built from these lines:
We write dump and aggregate hauling as a named class rather than as an exception to general trucking, and we read each account against the weight and permit regime of the state it operates in. For a Indiana operator that means starting from what the trucks are actually licensed and configured to carry, sizing physical damage to bodies and hoists rather than to a chassis value, and treating pit, stockpile and job-site work as its own exposure rather than an extension of the highway auto form.
If the operation also runs freight under separate authority, the Indiana trucking insurance page covers the state’s broader motor carrier picture, and the dump trucking insurance page covers the class mechanics that apply wherever the operator runs.
It depends which of Indiana’s two calculations governs. Under IC 9-20-4-1(a) an individual axle in a tandem group is limited to 20,000 pounds and the group to 34,000. Under the preserved January 4, 1975 limits in subsection (c) the axle ceiling is 18,000 pounds and a tandem assembly is limited to 16,000 pounds per axle. The greater of the two applies, except on a highway designated as heavy duty under IC 9-20-5, where the older alternative is unavailable.
Because they belong to different tiers of the same section. IC 9-20-4-1(a)(3) sets 20,000 pounds as the ordinary axle ceiling; subsection (c)(3) sets 18,000 pounds as the alternative axle ceiling inside the preserved 1975 calculation. Subsection (c) states that the greater of the two limits applies, so a short-wheelbase configuration penalized by the bridge formula can take the older result instead.
Yes. IC 9-20-6-2.2 creates an overweight divisible load permit program that is commodity-agnostic, covering gross vehicle weights above 80,000 and up to 120,000 pounds. It is valid only on designated highways within the state highway system and expressly avoids highways under a local authority’s jurisdiction; a local authority may grant its own equivalent under IC 9-20-6-2.5.
Because the chapter does not set one. IC 9-20-6-2.2(h) directed a fee recalculation keyed to a named research publication, subsection (m) commits the fee structure to rules adopted under IC 4-22-2, and IC 9-20-1-5 separately directs INDOT to adopt emergency rules for the fee structure. Quoting an amount from the chapter would misstate where the price is actually set.
It fixes the lawful load for that vehicle. IC 9-20-4-3(a) provides that the gross weight declared on the registration application determines and fixes the limit of the load, including the unladen weight of the fully equipped vehicle. It does not raise the statutory axle, tandem or formula limits. A 1.5 percent scale variance against registered weight is allowed by subsection (b) before a penalty may be assessed.
The carrier. IC 9-20-18-14.5(a) imposes the civil penalty on the carrier transporting the vehicle or load, in addition to any court-imposed fees or fines, assessed by the department of state revenue. The ceilings are $1,000 for a first permit violation, $1,500 for each subsequent one, $5,000 where a required permit was not obtained, and $10,000 where no permit was available for the excess.
No cover, tarp, freeboard or tailgate requirement appears in Indiana Code Title 9 as codified in the 2022 edition, read title-wide. What does apply is IC 9-21-8-48, which prohibits operating a vehicle whose contents are dripping, sifting, leaking or otherwise escaping. That reading is scoped to Title 9 in that edition and says nothing about Title 8, the Indiana Administrative Code, local ordinances, or amendments after mid-2022.
Only while both conditions in IC 9-20-2-1(a) hold, and only until the contracting authority says otherwise. The vehicle must be engaged in highway construction and its movement confined wholly to roads under construction and not yet open to unlimited public use. Under subsections (b) and (c), written notice from the authority — which may be a letter, specifications, a contract or any written project document — requires a permit and restores the article if none is obtained.
Not for the vehicle as such. IC 9-20-6-14 bars a local authority from adopting or enforcing an ordinance requiring a commercial motor vehicle operator to obtain a permit from the local authority, except as authorized by the chapter or expressly authorized by statute. Local authorities retain their restriction powers under IC 9-20-1-3 and their bridge reduction power under IC 9-20-7-2, both of which are enforceable only once signs are erected.
Every figure on this page was read at the source below on August 11, 2026, with the effective date of the version read. Treat each as current as of that date rather than as permanent.
Send the declared or registered weights alongside the axle configurations, and tell us where the material moves from. We will size the program against the work the trucks actually do rather than against a statutory floor.
