Motor carrier classes by state
Tennessee runs the federal weight limits and then sells relief from them on a meter. Excess weight is priced per ton-mile rather than per trip, the annual permit is bought for one named truck rather than for a fleet, and the liability insurance the permit office requires is stated for each claimant injured rather than for each person. Those three design choices decide what an aggregate operation here actually pays.
The exposures that make dump and aggregate work hard to underwrite belong to the class rather than to any one state — the trip frequency, the pit and job-site work that sits at the edge of a highway auto form, the hoist and body losses a physical damage schedule did not anticipate. They are covered on the dump trucking insurance page and are not repeated here.
What Tennessee contributes is a permit regime that is unusually explicit about its own arithmetic. The state publishes the fee rule, the live price list and a separate per-mile chart that renders the rule as a lookup table, and the three agree. That means an operator can price a movement before ordering it, which is not true everywhere, and it means an insurance file can be built against figures the agency itself publishes rather than against an estimate.
It also means the cost of running heavy in Tennessee scales with distance rather than with the fact of the trip. A short pit-to-plant movement and a cross-state movement at the same weight are priced very differently, and a fleet that quotes both off one number is quoting one of them wrong.
Everything below is cited to the Tennessee Department of Transportation rule, the department’s own permit pages, or a Tennessee Attorney General opinion published by the State — each read directly this session, with the date the document carries.
Pricing Tennessee work at permit weights? Send the routes and the annual mileage alongside the axle configurations — in Tennessee the weight fee is metered by ton-mile, so distance is part of the answer.
It is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up: Tennessee’s ordinary limits are the familiar federal figures. TDOT’s own permit office states them as gross weight 80,000 pounds, single axle 20,000 pounds and tandem axle 34,000 pounds, with legal width of 8 feet 6 inches and legal height of 13 feet 6 inches.
What differs is the ladder available by permit, and it is keyed to something most states do not key it to. Rule 1680-07-01-.09 states the general position first: the maximum allowable axle weights by special permit are 20,000 pounds on a single axle and 40,000 pounds on a tandem, and in no case shall a single axle in a tandem group exceed 20,000 pounds.
The higher figures then arrive with a width condition attached. Under paragraph (2), a special permit may be issued for axle weights exceeding those maximums provided the maximum width of the vehicle — including the truck and semi-trailer or trailer combination — does not exceed ten feet, with the load permitted to exceed ten feet if properly permitted. Inside that condition, no single axle may carry more than 23,000 pounds, no tandem axle group more than 46,000 pounds, and no tridem group more than 60,000 pounds.
That is a narrow-combination rule rather than a narrow-trailer rule, and the distinction matters when a fleet specifies equipment. The measurement runs across the tractor as well as the trailer, so a wide-track power unit can put a combination over ten feet even where the trailer alone would have cleared it, and the axle allowance drops back to 20,000 and 40,000 accordingly.
One transcription caution belongs with the citation. Rule 1680-07-01-.09(2) is printed in the official document with its subparagraphs running (a), (b), (c), then (e) — there is no (d). Quote the substance rather than the letters.
Above the ladder, paragraph (3) provides that movements with a gross weight exceeding 165,000 pounds may only be permitted where the movement is not detrimental or unsafe to the traveling public and the highway can accommodate it, and must be approved by the TDOT Structures Division before a permit issues. Some movements under 165,000 pounds are also subject to that prior approval based on axle spacing, which is a scheduling fact rather than a weight fact and belongs in a haul plan.
Tennessee does not sell a flat overweight trip permit. Rule 1680-07-01-.24(3)(a) prices excess weight at “$20.00 plus six cents ($.06) per ton mile,” and the department’s live OS/OW Permit Prices page carries the same formula.
The department also publishes the arithmetic already worked out. Its Weight Price Sheet states the calculation as $20 plus total miles traveled in Tennessee multiplied by a price per mile, and then lists the price per mile against gross weight in 500-pound steps. It begins at 80,500 pounds and $0.0150 per mile, and adds another $0.0150 for every additional 500 pounds — $0.3000 per mile at 90,000 pounds, $0.6000 at 100,000, $1.2000 at 120,000.
The two documents are the same instrument stated twice. Five hundred pounds is a quarter of a ton, and a quarter of six cents is one and a half cents, which is exactly the step the chart uses. That is a useful corroboration rather than a coincidence, and it is the reason this fee can be quoted with confidence.
The commercial consequence is that Tennessee prices distance, not events. A twelve-mile pit-to-plant shuttle at 90,000 pounds carries a weight fee close to the twenty-dollar base; the same load moved two hundred miles does not. An operator bidding a long haul at a short-haul permit assumption is absorbing the difference, and an operator running the same overweight route repeatedly should be comparing the accumulated single-trip cost against the annual instrument described in the next section rather than assuming one of them is obviously cheaper.
Dimension is priced separately from weight and much more simply. Rule 1680-07-01-.24 sets excessive width at $20.00 up to fourteen feet, $30.00 over fourteen and up to sixteen, and $30.00 plus $5.00 for each additional foot or fraction beyond sixteen; excessive height or length is $20.00 each. Single trip permits are valid for ten calendar days.
Mixed fleets should read the same rule twice. The towing schedule at 1680-07-01-.24(3)(b) prices excess weight up to 165,000 pounds at the general $20.00 plus six cents per ton mile, and excess weight over 165,000 pounds at twelve cents per ton mile with no base — a doubling at the top of the range that a heavy-recovery unit will meet and a gravel body will not. Heavy movement of that kind is described on the oversized and overweight trucking page.
Tennessee’s annual permit is not a fleet instrument. Rule 1680-07-01-.24(5)(a) makes it available “for each specific vehicle,” and the department states the change directly on its own price page: as of January 1, 2017 all annual permit prices became truck specific. A five-truck aggregate fleet buys five permits, and a truck traded mid-year does not carry its permit to the replacement without an amendment.
The weight ladder is priced in five steps by the excess weight the vehicle is permitted to carry: $750 up to 100,000 pounds; $1,500 over 100,000 and up to 120,000; $2,250 over 120,000 and up to 140,000; $3,000 over 140,000 and up to 155,000; and $3,500 over 155,000 and up to 165,000.
The over-dimension annual is a separate purchase at $100, covering loads up to thirteen feet ten inches in height, ninety feet in length or twelve feet six inches in width — with an extension to thirteen feet six inches wide on the condition that overwidth movements are escorted as required by Rule 1680-07-01-.06.
Part 7 of the same subparagraph is the sentence that surprises fleets: vehicles transporting loads that are both overdimensional and overweight “shall be charged a separate annual fee for both.” A transfer combination that is over on width as well as over on weight is buying two annual permits for one truck, and the budgeting error of assuming a single line item is an easy one to make across a fleet renewal.
The department also publishes over-dimension surcharges on its price page at $100 each for height of 13 feet 10 inches, width of 13 feet 6 inches and length of 90 feet. Annual permits may be supplemented for dimensions but not for weight, so a unit that outgrows its weight tier is buying the next tier rather than topping up the one it has.
Processing has its own rhythm and it is worth building into a schedule rather than discovering. Regular single trip and annual permits may take up to three days to process. Applications are accepted only electronically through the TNTRIPS application; the office states that it does not accept orders by phone or email, and directs customers who cannot apply online to a third-party permit service.
Building a Tennessee aggregate schedule? The per-ton-mile weight fee, the per-truck annual and the each-claimant insurance floor are three separate decisions, and they are easier to price together than one at a time.
Rule 1680-07-01-.24(4) sets out an evaluation charge that behaves unlike the rest of the fee schedule. The TDOT Structures Division evaluates, as it deems necessary, the capacity of bridges or similar structures to carry a proposed movement along a particular route — and the department “shall charge the requestor for this evaluation each time a different route is proposed.”
The rates are $100 for movements weighing over 165,000 pounds but not more than 250,000 pounds, $300 for movements over 250,000 pounds but not more than 500,000 pounds, and actual cost for movements over 500,000 pounds.
The billing trigger is the phrase to plan against. It is not one evaluation per permit or one per year — it is one per route proposed. A contractor who submits a route, is turned back for a closure and submits an alternate has bought two evaluations for one movement. On a project with shifting access, that is a line item that grows with the number of times the access changes.
TDOT states the same discipline about ordinary permits, and it is the reason routing cannot be reused informally either. Because of the number of construction projects and the rate at which roadways change, the office evaluates all permits case by case; a previously approved identical load on an identical route gets no shortcut on a later application.
The financial responsibility rule is the provision an insurance file has to answer, and its wording is not the usual wording. Rule 1680-07-01-.22 requires anyone moving an overweight or overdimensional article or commodity on Tennessee highways to hold the State harmless from claims for damages arising out of the privileges granted under the permit, and to that end to carry liability insurance with an insurer acceptable to the permit office and furnish a certificate of insurance “in the amount of not less than three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) for each claimant injured and one million dollars ($1,000,000) per occurrence.”
Read “each claimant injured” carefully against the more familiar each-person wording. The floor is expressed against claimants rather than against persons, which is the language the certificate has to satisfy. Any auto liability program placed for Tennessee permitted work should be checked against that phrasing rather than against an assumed equivalent.
The cancellation provision is equally specific and it runs to the agency rather than to the insured. Paragraph (2) requires the certificate to provide that the insurer will give the permit office written notice of intention to terminate the required insurance by certified mail, with termination becoming effective thirty days after the office receives that notice. TDOT also requires the certificate of liability insurance submitted with an application to name the department as a certificate holder.
Security for road damage is separate and discretionary. Rule 1680-07-01-.23(1) provides that the permit office may require, as a condition of issuance, that an applicant give bond with surety to indemnify the state and its counties against damage to roads or bridges resulting from the applicant’s use — and, where authorized, one bond may cover more than one permitted vehicle operated by the same applicant. Paragraph (2) leaves the amount to the office, sufficient to indemnify the state and counties for the potential damages. There is no scheduled bond figure.
The alternative is documentary rather than financial, and it is unusual. Paragraph (3) provides that a sworn statement furnishing satisfactory proof of the applicant’s solvency “shall mean an audited financial statement, certified by a certified public accountant, showing net assets of the applicant in an amount, as determined by the TDOT Permit Office, sufficient to indemnify the state and/or counties.” An operator with a clean audited balance sheet can satisfy the requirement without approaching a surety at all — which is a real advantage for an established aggregate company and no help whatever to a new venture, a position discussed on the new venture trucking page.
Payment mechanics carry one more figure. TDOT accepts credit card, escrow account or check, and an escrow account is opened by completing the State of Tennessee Permitting System Contract and emailing it to the permit office. The department states that it takes several weeks to complete the process and that the minimum balance to open an escrow account is $1,000.00. A fleet planning to run permitted work in Tennessee should start that clock well ahead of the first movement.
Tennessee’s weight limits are set by Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-7-203, and the structure of that section is set out in a published Tennessee Attorney General opinion, Opinion No. 14-30, dated March 12, 2014. Subsection (a) provides that no freight motor vehicle shall be operated on the public highways of the state where the total weight on a single axle or any group of axles exceeds the weight limitations set forth in subdivisions (b)(1) through (7). Violations of the part may result in fines, penalties and forfeiture under § 55-7-206.
Subdivision (b)(7) is the one that changes how enforcement works, and it is worth being precise about what it is. The opinion quotes it as providing that “for purposes of enforcement of this section, weight restrictions shall be deemed to have a margin of error of ten percent (10%) of the true gross or axle weight for all farm trucks when being operated over the state highway system other than the portion designated as the interstate system.” That is the whole of the operative sentence as the Attorney General reproduces it, and the class it names is farm trucks.
Three features of that follow directly from the words. It is a margin of error written into the weight section itself, not an allowance bought from a permit office and not a tolerance granted case by case — nothing is applied for and nothing is paid. It is class-scoped rather than open, and the class the opinion names is farm trucks — defined in the subdivision itself as trucks utilized by farmers to load grain, fiber, produce, livestock, milk or other agricultural products produced on their farms and to transport those commodities to their respective markets, including farm-to-market transportation by the farmer, the farmer’s family, an employee or a representative hired by the farmer. The subdivision is lettered, and the opinion answers its question by reference to subparagraph (C), so § 55-7-203(b)(7) plainly carries subparagraphs before that one; what those subparagraphs contain is not established by this document and is not asserted here. And it is geographically bounded: it applies over the state highway system other than the portion designated as the interstate system.
The operative question for any particular fleet is therefore not what the percentage is but whether its trucks answer a definition the subdivision itself supplies. That is a question about the text of § 55-7-203(b)(7) and its defining subparagraphs, and it is worth putting to counsel with the actual haul described rather than assumed. An operator who relies on a margin its trucks do not qualify for is running ten percent over the limit with no relief at all, and an overweight citation follows the driver and the file both.
The Attorney General’s opinion also records the reason the courts give these sections weight. Tennessee’s weight and length restrictions were enacted as a public-safety measure to protect motorists and their passengers traveling over the highways of the State — which is the framing a plaintiff’s bar uses when a weight violation appears anywhere near a loss.
TDOT publishes its escort matrix as a table, and for an aggregate combination the width rows are the ones that bind. From 10 feet 1 inch to 12 feet 6 inches a front escort is required on two-lane routes where the pavement width is less than 24 feet. From 12 feet 7 inches to 13 feet 6 inches a front escort is required on two-lane routes and a rear escort on interstate and four-lane routes. At 13 feet 7 inches and greater both front and rear escorts are required. On height, 15 feet 1 inch and greater requires a front escort with a height pole; on length, 90 feet 1 inch to 120 feet requires a rear escort and 120 feet 1 inch and greater requires both.
The department attaches its own reservation to the table, in its own emphasis: at the discretion of the permit office, additional escorts may be required for complex or very large loads. A haul plan that treats the matrix as a ceiling rather than a floor is treating a discretionary standard as a fixed one.
Curfews apply to escorted movements only, and they are named by county rather than by city limit. Escorted loads must observe rush-hour restrictions Monday through Friday from 7:00 am to 9:00 am and 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm in Davidson, Rutherford, Knox, Shelby and Hamilton counties. Loads which do not require escorts are allowed continuous travel.
That combination produces a scheduling rule worth stating out loud. In Tennessee the escort requirement is what pulls a load into the curfew, so a configuration change that crosses an escort threshold does not merely add an escort cost — it removes two hours of the morning and two hours of the afternoon from the working day in the five metropolitan counties where the aggregate demand mostly sits.
Where the Tennessee Highway Patrol provides the escort, the price page states the rate as $65.00 per hour plus $.13 per mile, with the department’s own note that a minimum of two officers applies. The rate is per officer time and mileage, so the two-officer minimum is the practical floor on any THP-escorted movement, and it should be carried in a bid rather than absorbed.
Asked whether the state permit covers county or local roads, TDOT answers no: only state and federal roads are covered. The office nonetheless requires the full route including local roads in order to evaluate the movement, and states that as a courtesy it checks bridge height and weight restrictions on local routes as well.
Then comes a one-line carve-out that no neighboring state can duplicate: “Currently only the City of Memphis requires a permit for local roads.” A single named municipality operates its own local permit requirement alongside the state instrument, and it happens to sit at one of the state’s larger aggregate and construction markets. An operator working Shelby County on local streets is dealing with two permit offices rather than one.
The scope answer is also a compliance trap in the other direction. Because the state permit does not reach county and local roads, the last mile into a pit, a plant or a job site is frequently outside the instrument that authorized the rest of the movement — even though the route submitted to TDOT included it. That is a gap worth mapping before a haul contract is signed, not after a local citation.
Registration has a vocational wrinkle for self-propelled equipment. TDOT defines a fixed load as a self-propelled vehicle not designed to carry or move freight — cranes and drill rigs are its own examples — and requires a permit for one when it is over legal dimensions, or the steer axle exceeds 20,000 pounds, or the drive axles exceed 17,000 pounds, or gross vehicle weight exceeds 80,000 pounds. The maximum permitted weight for a fixed load traveling under its own power is 150,000 pounds, with a maximum axle weight of 24,000 pounds. Fixed loads require either county fixed load license plates, for vehicles registered in Tennessee, or trip and fuel permits.
Interstate credentials are not a gate at the permit window. The office states that it does not require IRP or IFTA to move, though a valid license plate for the vehicle is required, and directs a carrier crossing state lines without them to the Tennessee Office of Motor Carrier for a trip and fuel permit, obtainable through approved third-party permit services.
Tennessee permits are amendable once. Within seventy-two hours of ordering a single trip permit, dimensions or vehicle may be amended through the TNTRIPS application. After that, and for annual permits or for amendments to routes or load descriptions, the change must be submitted to the permit office on its amendment form. The department states plainly that it does not issue refunds and does not issue extensions.
A broken-down truck is handled inside that same single amendment. TDOT describes it case by case: generally a new single trip permit is ordered with the replacement truck’s information, typically with the fees waived, and an annual permit approved for amendment is re-issued with the new vehicle identification number. For a fleet, that is a reason to keep the amendment allowance unspent where possible rather than using it on a discretionary change.
The load description is not a free-text field in practice. The office maintains a list of load codes and asks applicants to select one where possible, and it refuses broad descriptors outright — its answer names “general freight” as an example of what will not be accepted, and directs the applicant to be more specific, offering construction equipment and steel beams as worked examples. Only where no existing code fits may the applicant select other and complete a description field.
That has a documentation consequence worth taking seriously. Because the permit names the commodity rather than a generic category, the permit file for a Tennessee movement is a per-commodity record of what the truck was authorized to carry on a given route on a given day. It is unusually good evidence in a loss investigation, and it is unusually poor evidence when the load code and the actual load do not match. Keeping the two aligned is a records discipline that pays off on a motor truck cargo claim as much as on a compliance audit.
Marking and lighting are specified in the same detail. An “Oversize Load” banner is required front and rear for anything over ten feet wide or seventy-five feet long, yellow background with black lettering, letters a minimum of ten inches high with a stroke of one and five-eighths inches, in good condition and legible. Warning flags must be solid red and at least eighteen inches square. Night movement of an overwidth or overlength load requires a red side marker lamp on each side indicating maximum overhang, plus two red lamps and two red reflectors on the rear.
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 Tennessee 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 Tennessee 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.
For a single trip, excess weight is priced at $20.00 plus six cents ($.06) per ton mile under TDOT Rule 1680-07-01-.24(3)(a). The department publishes the same calculation worked out on its Weight Price Sheet as $20 plus total Tennessee miles multiplied by a price per mile, stepping $0.0150 per mile for every additional 500 pounds from 80,500 pounds upward. Excessive width is $20.00 up to fourteen feet, $30.00 over fourteen and up to sixteen, and $30.00 plus $5.00 per additional foot or fraction above sixteen; excessive height or length is $20.00 each. Single trip permits are valid for ten calendar days.
No. Rule 1680-07-01-.24(5)(a) makes the annual permit available for each specific vehicle, and TDOT states that as of January 1, 2017 all annual permit prices became truck specific. The weight ladder is $750 up to 100,000 pounds, $1,500 over 100,000 up to 120,000, $2,250 over 120,000 up to 140,000, $3,000 over 140,000 up to 155,000 and $3,500 over 155,000 up to 165,000. The $100 over-dimension annual is separate, and a vehicle that is both overdimensional and overweight is charged a separate annual fee for each.
Rule 1680-07-01-.22 requires liability insurance with an insurer acceptable to the permit office in an amount of not less than $300,000 for each claimant injured and $1,000,000 per occurrence, evidenced by a certificate furnished to the office. The certificate must provide that the insurer give the office written notice of intention to terminate by certified mail, effective thirty days after the office receives it. TDOT also requires the certificate submitted with an application to name the department as a certificate holder.
Sometimes, and the route is documentary. Rule 1680-07-01-.23(1) makes the bond discretionary — the permit office may require it as a condition of issuance — and paragraph (3) provides that a sworn statement of solvency means an audited financial statement certified by a certified public accountant showing net assets, in an amount determined by the office, sufficient to indemnify the state and its counties. Where a bond is required, one bond may cover more than one permitted vehicle operated by the same applicant if the office authorizes it. No bond amount is scheduled in the rule.
No. TDOT states that only state and federal roads are covered by the permit, though the office requires the full route including local roads in order to evaluate the movement and checks bridge height and weight restrictions on local routes as a courtesy. The department also states that currently only the City of Memphis requires a permit for local roads.
Only when it requires an escort. TDOT states that loads which do not require escorts are allowed continuous travel, while escorted loads must observe county curfews Monday through Friday from 7:00 am to 9:00 am and 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm in Davidson, Rutherford, Knox, Shelby and Hamilton counties. Where the Tennessee Highway Patrol supplies the escort, the price page states $65.00 per hour plus $.13 per mile with a minimum of two officers.
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.
