Motor carrier classes by state
Wyoming did not simply set its own axle limits. It enacted a nine-article interstate agreement on vehicle size and weight into its own statute book, seated two legislative committee chairmen on the committee that runs it, and pays for the seat out of motor carrier fees. The 36,000-pound tandem every Wyoming aggregate operator works to is written into that agreement as a regional objective.
Whether an aggregate fleet is easy or difficult to place turns mostly on characteristics of the work itself — how the day is broken into short repeated cycles, how much of it is spent away from paved public roads, and what the equipment on the chassis is worth when it fails. None of that is a Wyoming question, and it is taken up on the dump trucking insurance page instead.
Wyoming’s contribution is institutional. Three of the instruments that matter most to an aggregate fleet here are not in the motor vehicle title at all, and two of them are not vehicle law in any ordinary sense. One is a multilateral agreement on size and weight standards. One is a registration regime for construction machinery that applies whether or not the machine ever touches a highway. One is a county-initiated road construction program in the highways title, financed half by the state, that exists to build access into industrial sites.
Taken together they describe a state that thinks about heavy equipment and heavy loads at the level of policy rather than at the level of the individual truck. That has practical consequences: the equipment schedule for a Wyoming operation is a registration question as well as an insurance question, the road serving a new pit may be a project rather than a private drive, and the weight numbers have a documented reason for being what they are.
Everything below is quoted from the Wyoming Statutes as compiled by the Legislative Service Office — the Title 31 and Title 24 files as generated on May 8, 2026 — or from the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s Motor Carrier Chapter 5 rulemaking record, with the source named at each figure.
Adding a Wyoming pit, plant or crew? Send the equipment list as well as the trucks — Wyoming registers construction machinery separately, and a project can require proof of it before the machine turns a wheel.
W.S. 31-18-901 does not describe an agreement or authorize the state to join one. It reproduces the instrument: “The Multistate Highway Transportation Agreement is enacted into law and entered into with all other jurisdictions legally joining therein in form substantially as follows,” and then nine full articles follow inside the section itself. Article I defines “Vehicle” for its purposes as “any vehicle as defined by statute to be subject to size and weight standards which operates in two (2) or more participating jurisdictions.” The subject matter of the agreement is size and weight and nothing else.
Article II sets the boundary that stops anyone from over-reading it. Section 3 provides that “This agreement shall not authorize the operation of a vehicle in any participating jurisdiction contrary to the laws or regulations of that state.” The agreement harmonizes standards; it does not create a pass. Section 5 requires each entering jurisdiction to give every other participant a list of any restriction, condition or limitation it attaches to the general terms, so the divergences are documented rather than discovered. Article VIII reinforces the point from the other side: all existing statutes prescribing weight and size standards, and all existing special permit statutes, “shall continue to be of force and effect until amended or repealed by law.”
Article III builds the machinery. Each participating jurisdiction has two designated representatives, who together constitute a cooperating committee empowered to collect and evaluate research on size and weight matters, to recommend research where it has not been done, to recommend changes in law and policy “with emphasis on compatibility of laws and uniformity of administrative rules,” to consider mutual problems of the motor carrier industry, and to recommend improvements in highway operations and state administration of transportation law. Each representative has one vote, no action carries without a majority of the votes cast, the committee meets at least annually, elects a chairman, vice-chairman and secretary, and submits an annual report to the legislature of every participating jurisdiction.
Article V fixes how it lives and dies. The agreement enters into force when enacted by any two or more jurisdictions, becomes effective as to any other on that jurisdiction’s own enactment, and permits withdrawal — but “no such withdrawal shall take effect until thirty (30) days after the designated representative of the withdrawing jurisdiction has given notice in writing of the withdrawal to all other participating jurisdictions.” Article VII requires a copy of the agreement, its amendments, rules and interpretations to be filed in the highway department of each participating jurisdiction and made available for review by interested parties.
Two short sections finish the article. W.S. 31-18-902 directs the department of transportation to cooperate with and assist the committee to the extent funds are appropriated, and provides that funds for administering the agreement, including participation in the committee and the actual expenses of the designated representative, “shall be budgeted from the fees collected under W.S. 31-18-502.” That section is the annual decal fee charged to fuel tax licensees — an amount the department sets “to be sufficient to recover reasonable administrative costs of the International Fuel Tax Agreement and the Multistate Highway Transportation Agreement, but not more than ten dollars ($10.00) per annual decal,” credited to a multistate highway and fuel tax agreements account within the highway fund. W.S. 31-18-903 requires the committee’s annual report to be filed with the governor and with the joint transportation and highways interim committee.
Article IX of the agreement deals with who represents the state, and it does so by naming offices rather than an agency. Section 2 provides that the persons authorized to represent Wyoming as designated representatives to the committee “shall be the chairman of the senate transportation and highways committee and the chairman of the house transportation and highways committee, or a legislator or a state agency official each chairman may designate.” Section 3 adds that the two chairmen shall also designate one alternate representative, who must likewise be a legislator or a state agency official, to serve in the absence of the designated representative.
The default seats are legislative. That is unusual for a body whose work is technical — research evaluation, uniformity of administrative rules, enforcement procedure — and it is worth reading precisely rather than as a slogan. The statute does not exclude agency officials; each chairman may designate one in his place, and Article I’s own definition of “designated representative” is “a legislator or other person authorized under article IX.” What the statute does is put the seat in the hands of the legislature’s transportation chairmen and let them decide who occupies it.
Article III section 1 then attaches real authority to those seats: the committee may recommend changes in law and policy directed at compatibility of laws and uniformity of administrative rules across the participating jurisdictions, may consider the motor carrier industry’s mutual transportation problems and recommend changes, and reports annually to every participating legislature. A recommendation that reaches a legislature through the chairman of its own transportation committee travels a shorter distance than one arriving from an agency — which is part of why Wyoming’s weight standards move on a documented process rather than on an administrative decision.
W.S. 31-18-802(a)(v) carries the weight limits. Subparagraph (D): “No single axle shall carry a load in excess of twenty thousand (20,000) pounds.” Subparagraph (E): “No tandem axle shall carry a load in excess of thirty-six thousand (36,000) pounds and no one (1) axle of any group of two (2) consecutive axles shall exceed the weight permitted on a single axle.” That tandem figure sits two thousand pounds above the thirty-four thousand pound tandem used on the federal system, and the second half of the sentence keeps the pair honest — the group allowance cannot be reached by loading one axle of it past the single-axle limit.
Article IV of the agreement enacted at W.S. 31-18-901 states the same numbers as the regional objective. The participating jurisdictions declare it their objective to obtain more efficient transportation “by encouraging the adoption of standards that will, as minimums, allow the operation on all state highways, except those determined through engineering evaluation to be inadequate, with a single-axle weight of 20,000 pounds, a tandem-axle weight of 36,000 pounds and a gross vehicle or combination weight of that resulting from application of the formula: W = 500[LN/(N-1) + 12N + 36].” Wyoming’s tandem is not a local quirk; it is the standard the agreement in its own statute book exists to encourage.
The triple axle is defined rather than merely limited, and the definition names the equipment dump operators actually run. Subparagraph (F) sets a ceiling of forty-two thousand pounds on a triple axle, defined as “three (3) consecutive load bearing axles that articulate from an attachment to the vehicle including a connecting mechanism or variable load suspension axle to keep all axles at or below legal limits,” with the spacing between the first and third axles greater than ninety-six inches and not more than one hundred two inches. Subparagraph (J) adds the operating duty: a variable load suspension axle “shall produce a distribution of weight to prevent an axle or axle group from exceeding allowable weights,” and “Dummy axles shall not be considered in the determination of allowable weights.”
The tire and wheel limits sit in the same paragraph and bind independently. Subparagraph (C): no wheel may carry more than ten thousand pounds; no tire on a steering axle may carry more than seven hundred fifty pounds per inch of tire width; no other tire on a vehicle may carry more than six hundred pounds per inch of tire width; and “‘Tire width’ means the width stamped on the tire by the manufacturer.” Subparagraph (A) requires pneumatic tires except at speeds under ten miles per hour, and (B) caps a solid-tire wheel at eight thousand pounds.
A lift-axle configuration is therefore doing legal work in Wyoming, not just mechanical work. The spacing window is narrow and specific, the statute expects the axle to be managing distribution rather than merely present, and an axle carrying no load is written out of the calculation. Anyone specifying trucks for Wyoming aggregate work is choosing a configuration against a statutory definition, and the same specification is what a physical damage schedule has to describe accurately if the values are to mean anything.
Hauling pit-run and plant-mix on the same trucks? Tell us the commodity mix — in Wyoming that distinction changes the lawful weight, and it belongs in the submission.
Most of the gross weight question in Wyoming is answered by a choice rather than by a number. Subparagraph (H) of the same weights paragraph provides that “Vehicles operating on primary and secondary highways may operate in accordance with Table I or Table II at the discretion of the operator.” Two gross weight tables, one election, made at the load.
The two run on different variables, which is why the election is worth something. Under Table I the total gross weight imposed by any group of two or more consecutive axles may not exceed the value corresponding to the distance between the extremes of that axle group — a bridge-formula table applied group by group, subject to one express relaxation for a pair of tandem sets standing thirty-six feet or more apart, measured first axle to last, which are allowed thirty-six thousand pounds apiece. Under Table II the total gross weight imposed by the vehicle or combination may not exceed the value corresponding to the distance between the extremes of the whole vehicle or combination. One measures groups; the other measures the truck end to end.
There is one hard limit on the election, at (H)(III): vehicles with two consecutive sets of tandem axles less than twenty-two feet apart between the first and last axles of the sets “shall comply with gross weight Table I.” Short combinations do not get the choice.
The Interstate is governed separately by subparagraph (G): subject to the axle limits, no vehicle or combination may operate on the interstate or national defense highways above the maximum weight allowed under federal law, and must comply with Table I, with the same thirty-six-foot tandem-set allowance. So the operator’s election lives on the primary and secondary system — which is where aggregate moves — and disappears on the Interstate.
The commercial reading is that a Wyoming dump truck’s legal capacity depends on a decision the driver is entitled to make, and that the decision is configuration-dependent rather than route-dependent. That places a real training and documentation burden on the operator, because the state has handed the compliance choice to the person at the controls.
W.S. 31-18-804(b) authorizes a permit “exclusive of interstate highways for hauling of forest products, sugar beets, gravel, livestock and agricultural products hauled in trucks that cannot be weighed at point of loading at a weight which is not more than ten percent (10%) in excess of allowable axle weights and not more than five thousand (5,000) pounds in excess of gross weights allowed under gross weight Table I.” The predicate — a truck that cannot be weighed where it is loaded — is the pit, and gravel is named in the operative text rather than left to be inferred.
The pricing is durational and modest: “The permit fee is fifteen dollars ($15.00) for a single trip permit not to exceed ninety-six (96) continuous hours. The permit fee is fifty dollars ($50.00) for any ninety (90) continuous days.” Two enforcement softeners travel with the subsection. A destination allowance: a truck hauling those commodities that exceeds the legal limits “shall be allowed to unload at its point of destination in this state if the point of destination is within one (1) mile of the truck’s location when the illegal weight limitation was determined, unless an immediate threat to public safety exists.” And a first-offense grace: “No penalty for the first violation shall be imposed, but any subsequent violation shall be subject to the penalty provisions of W.S. 31-18-805.”
The Department of Transportation’s Motor Carrier Chapter 5 rule, published with its Statement of Reasons following a comment period that ran from May 28 to July 5, 2024 and a public hearing on October 1, 2024, gives the tolerance a permit class and the commodity a definition. The class is Class F: permits obtainable, exclusive of interstate highways, for hauling forest products, sugar beets, gravel, livestock and agricultural products in vehicles that cannot be weighed at point of loading, with the rule restating that “Permits shall not be issued for more than 10 percent over legal axle weights and more than 5,000 pounds over legal gross weights (including inner bridges) allowed under Gross Weight Table 1,” at $15 for a single trip and $50 for ninety continuous days, the permit to be carried in the vehicle and displayed to any permit-issuing authority or law enforcement on request.
The definition is the part that decides arguments. Chapter 5 provides that “‘Gravel’ means pit-run stone, coarse aggregate, and products of screened stone, crushed stone, or a combination thereof. This definition does not include sand, silt, clay, and refined by-products that use gravel, including plant-mixed asphalt, cement treated base, and Portland cement concrete.” Pit-run, screened and crushed stone are inside the tolerance. Sand is not. Hot-mix asphalt is not. Cement treated base and ready-mix concrete are not.
That line runs straight through the middle of a typical mixed operation. A fleet that hauls crushed base one week and plant-mix the next is inside the allowance on one job and outside it on the other, with the same trucks, the same drivers and the same roads. It is one of the few places in this class where the commodity on the ticket changes the lawful weight, and it belongs in the conversation about how a schedule and a motor truck cargo program are written as much as in the dispatch office.
Division 2 of Title 31, Chapter 18, Article 2 is a standalone registration regime for construction equipment, and it is easy to miss because it is not about trucks. “Mobile machinery” is defined at W.S. 31-18-203(a)(i) as “heavy equipment, except shop or hand tools or attachments, which is self-propelled, towed or hauled and used primarily in construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, ditches, buildings or land reclamation.” Loaders, dozers, excavators and the plant that feeds a dump operation are squarely inside it.
Subsection (b) states the duty in terms that reach off the highway: “no mobile machinery shall be operated in this state, whether or not upon the public highways of this state, unless registered under this division.” It then adds a project gate: “Prior to using any mobile machinery on any construction project receiving state funds, the contractor shall provide certification to the public agency or engineer in charge of the project that the mobile machinery has been registered as required by this division.” The certification runs to the engineer in charge, before use, on any state-funded project — which is a documentation obligation on the contractor, not a roadside one on the operator.
There is a tax-roll route out. Subsection (c) exempts machinery listed on a property tax assessment roll in this state from the registration requirement, and directs each county treasurer to issue stickers to those owners “upon receipt of an application by the owner and payment of an administrative fee of six dollars ($6.00).” The six-dollar sticker is the paperwork that proves the exemption, and it is the cheapest compliance item in the whole regime.
W.S. 31-18-204 lists the exclusions, and two of them matter locally: machinery owned by the United States, the state or a political subdivision; implements of husbandry; machinery already registered under W.S. 31-2-201 or 31-18-201; machinery in transit through the state or here for delivery or repair; dealer inventory; machinery “used in the extraction or production of bentonite, coal, trona or uranium and owned by the producer”; machinery used exclusively for the drilling of wells; and machinery brought in for not more than seven calendar days to demonstrate its operation to prospective buyers.
The fee itself is a property tax substitute rather than a flat charge. Under W.S. 31-18-205 the owner applies to a county treasurer annually and pays “a registration fee in lieu of property taxes,” computed by multiplying the statewide average county, school district and state property tax mill levy for the preceding year by the applicable assessment factor and by the valuation of the machinery, with the department of revenue establishing valuation schedules. Registration after February 1 is prorated by the full months remaining in the calendar year. A non-Wyoming owner may take a temporary sticker under W.S. 31-18-206 for not more than eleven months and not into the next calendar year, at the prorated fee plus a ten-dollar administrative fee and six dollars for the sticker. A rental or leasing company may elect under W.S. 31-18-207 to collect from the user a fee equivalent to one-half of one percent of the rental or lease payment, with a six-dollar identifying decal on each item.
The penalty gives the regime teeth. W.S. 31-18-208 makes a violation a misdemeanor “punishable by a fine of not more than seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), imprisonment for not more than six (6) months, or both for each violation,” and requires the violator, in addition, to pay the required fee plus a penalty of ten percent of it. For each violation — so an unregistered yard of equipment is not a single exposure. Reconciling the equipment schedule against the county registrations is a short exercise that occasionally finds something, and it is worth doing before a state-funded job asks for the certification.
Wyoming keeps a road construction program in the highways title that exists to build access to industrial sites, and the trigger belongs to the county. W.S. 24-5-101 names it: the program “shall be known as ‘The Industrial Road Program’, which shall be in addition to and not as a substitute for any federal aid, primary, secondary or state-county road construction program or any other road program now in existence.”
W.S. 24-5-102 sets the initiating act. A board of county commissioners “may on its motion by resolution duly adopted where it deems the public interest so requires and a road-building emergency prevails incite the procedure for the establishment of an industrial road.” The board determines the course and the point of termination. And there is a hard precondition: “Before a board of the county commissioners of a county or counties can initiate the road program herein, it must have the cash money available for the project as described.” The county then notifies the transportation commission of its intention.
What follows is a viewers process rather than an application. W.S. 24-5-103 appoints three viewers to examine the expediency of the proposed road: one appointed by the county board — or by the chairman alone if in his judgment an emergency exists — who must be a suitable and disinterested elector of the county and may be a commissioner; one appointed by the member of the transportation commission in whose district the road lies; and a third chosen by the first two, who “shall not be a resident of the county in which the proposed industrial site is located.” Under W.S. 24-5-104 they are sworn before entering on their duties, file their oaths with the county clerk, and “shall not be confined to the precise matter of the petition but may inquire or determine whether an industrial road in the vicinity is required.” W.S. 24-5-105 directs them to weigh “both the public and private convenience, and also the expense of the proposed road,” and W.S. 24-5-106 requires a written report on practicability, whether the road ought to be established, the probable expense including damages to property owners along the line, and whatever else will let the board act understandingly.
The money is fixed in statute on both sides. W.S. 24-5-117 puts the work under the immediate control and supervision of the director of the department of transportation, defines “construction” to include “construction, reconstruction, surveys, mapping, right-of-way costs, bridges, culverts and fencing,” and splits the bill: “Fifty percent (50%) of all expense shall be paid by the department of transportation, and the other fifty percent (50%) of the construction costs shall be paid by the board of the county commissioners.” W.S. 24-5-118 requires the transportation commission to set aside four million dollars at the beginning of each biennium into an industrial road program account within the highway fund, with unused funds lapsing back to the general account each biennium. W.S. 24-5-119 requires the county to match equally, caps county spending at two million dollars each biennium, and excludes small work outright: “This act shall not apply to any project having a total cost of less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000.00) total.” The county acquires the right-of-way, charged against the program.
Two provisions decide who gets built and who owns the result. W.S. 24-5-121 ranks applications when the commission has more of them than money, by priority of notice from the county board, county money actually available and deposited with the commission, traffic count, the number of people the project will serve, and the tax value of the area served as shown on the county assessment rolls. W.S. 24-5-120 settles the aftermath in one sentence: “The industrial road, when completed, shall be designated as a county road and shall be the county responsibility as to maintenance and repair.” W.S. 24-5-122 permits two or more counties to associate on a project.
For an operator opening or expanding a pit, this is a route to a built and maintained public road rather than a private haul road carried on the balance sheet — but it runs on a county resolution, an emergency finding, a cash commitment and a ranking, none of which the applicant controls. It is a planning-horizon instrument, not a project-schedule one, and it is worth raising with the county well before the first load moves. Where access is instead taken directly onto a state highway, W.S. 24-6-105 draws its own line: where the commission grants a private and not a commercial entrance, “the entrance or point of access shall not be used for or in connection with the conduct of any roadside business or other commercial enterprise.”
Wyoming’s restriction power sits in the highways title, not the vehicle title. W.S. 24-1-106(a) provides that the department of transportation “may restrict the use of, or close, any state highway whenever the department considers the closing or restriction of use necessary,” for the protection of the public, “For the protection of the highway from damage during storms or during construction, improvement or maintenance operations thereon,” or for a special or athletic event. W.S. 24-1-108 supplies the notice forms.
The penalty for running a posted closure is tiered, and the top tier is written for weight. Under W.S. 24-1-109(a) a willful failure to observe a sign, marker, warning, notice or direction placed under W.S. 24-1-108 is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of not more than seven hundred fifty dollars, or up to thirty days, or both. Subsection (d) then displaces that for closures “to light and high profile vehicles or other weight based closures”: a first offense draws a fine of one thousand dollars and may draw up to thirty days, and a second or subsequent offense within three years after a conviction under the subsection draws two thousand five hundred dollars and may draw up to thirty days.
The licensing consequence attaches to the repeat offense specifically. The sentence appears inside the second-offense paragraph and is scoped to it: “For purposes of any driver licensing action, a conviction under this paragraph shall be deemed reckless driving under W.S. 31-5-229.” Paragraph (d)(iii) then places the fine on the driver of the light and high-profile vehicle at the time of the violation. A second weight-based closure conviction inside three years therefore does not stay on the company’s ledger — it lands on a driver’s record as reckless driving, which is a materially different fact at renewal than a weight fine, and one that shows up wherever motor vehicle records are pulled.
There is also a documented way through a closure rather than around it. W.S. 24-1-109(b) permits the department or the state highway patrol to let a person proceed past a posted closure where the destination lies beyond the closure point but in an area unaffected by the conditions warranting it, where no dangerous or hazardous condition would reasonably preclude the travel, and where the person agrees to any conditions imposed. Subsection (c) makes that a case-by-case decision.
Ordinary weight enforcement runs on its own ladder at W.S. 31-18-805. A violation of the size and weight article, of the rules under it, or of permit conditions is a misdemeanor carrying not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, up to thirty days, or both. For weight specifically, subsection (e) substitutes a schedule running from twenty-five dollars for up to two thousand pounds of excess, through two hundred dollars at eight thousand and one to ten thousand, five hundred dollars at fourteen thousand and one to sixteen thousand, and one thousand dollars over twenty thousand pounds — “Plus an additional two hundred dollars ($200.00) for each one thousand (1,000) pounds or fraction thereof exceeding twenty thousand (20,000) pounds over the legal limits.” Subsection (c) obliges a driver, on the demand of a state trooper, to submit to weighing at any state owned or leased scales “not to exceed five (5) miles from the declared route of travel,” unless already weighed at a port of entry with the same load.
One provision in that section is genuinely useful to a dump operation and is easy to miss. Subsection (d) provides that where the vehicle is within the gross weight provisions of Table I or Table II but exceeds the axle limits by not more than two thousand pounds — or exceeds the width or length limits by not more than twelve inches — “the cargo may be repositioned by the operator to comply with the legal limits and be allowed to proceed without penalty,” and that where a load has shifted in transit and cannot reasonably be repositioned, a permit may be issued. Material that migrates in a body during a haul is the ordinary case, not the exception, and Wyoming has written a remedy for it into the penalty section.
The load-escape duty is enacted twice, in identical words. W.S. 31-5-228, in the general traffic chapter, and W.S. 31-18-603, in the commercial vehicle chapter, both read: “No vehicle shall be driven or moved on any highway unless the vehicle is so constructed or loaded as to prevent any of its load from dropping, sifting, leaking or otherwise escaping therefrom. This section does not prohibit the necessary spreading of any substance in highway maintenance or construction operations.” A commercial dump operator is inside both, and the maintenance and construction spreading exception is written into both.
The duty is stated as an outcome — constructed or loaded so that nothing escapes — with no covering, freeboard or tailgate specification attached to it in either section. Compliance is therefore proved by loading practice rather than by fitted equipment, which puts body condition, tailgate seal and pit loading discipline into evidence when a windshield or paint claim arrives.
A state permit does not carry across jurisdictions of ownership. The Department of Transportation’s Motor Carrier Chapter 5 rule imposes a local approval condition on permit holders in terms: “The permit holder shall contact city and/or county officials for approval for transportation on their roads.” A Wyoming permitted movement is a two-step exercise where the route touches municipal or county roads — the state instrument, and then the consent of whoever owns the surface.
The same rule leaves the damage exposure exactly where an insurance program has to answer for it: the permit “is in no way a guarantee by the State of Wyoming or its agents that the load shall clear any structure or bridge,” and the applicant operating under it “assumes full responsibility for all damage to highways, bridges, and appurtenances resulting from transporting the load described in the permit.” The same condition adds that the permit holder “is also responsible for checking weather conditions and size and weight restrictions before and during the movement.” Nothing about holding a permit narrows any of that, which is why the permit file and the trucking auto liability program have to be built to the same route rather than to different ones. Operations that regularly work above the ordinary schedule should read that alongside the oversized and overweight trucking insurance page rather than treating permitted work as incidental.
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 Wyoming 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 Wyoming 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.
Because Wyoming enacted a regional standard rather than adopting the federal one off the Interstate. W.S. 31-18-802(a)(v)(E) sets the tandem at thirty-six thousand pounds, and Article IV of the Multistate Highway Transportation Agreement — enacted word for word into W.S. 31-18-901 — states as an objective of the participating jurisdictions the adoption of standards allowing, as minimums, “a single-axle weight of 20,000 pounds, a tandem-axle weight of 36,000 pounds” together with the bridge formula. The agreement does not authorize operation contrary to another state’s law, so the figure is Wyoming’s standard, not a portable one.
No. The Department of Transportation’s Motor Carrier Chapter 5 rule places a local approval condition on the permit holder: “The permit holder shall contact city and/or county officials for approval for transportation on their roads.” The state permit governs the state system, and consent for municipal or county surfaces is a separate step. Where the route touches both, plan on two approvals rather than one.
Yes, and it is named in the statute. W.S. 31-18-804(b) authorizes a permit, exclusive of interstate highways, for hauling forest products, sugar beets, gravel, livestock and agricultural products in trucks that cannot be weighed at point of loading, at not more than ten percent over allowable axle weights and not more than five thousand pounds over gross weights allowed under Table I. The fee is fifteen dollars for a single trip permit not to exceed ninety-six continuous hours, and fifty dollars for any ninety continuous days. The Department’s Chapter 5 rule administers it as a Class F permit.
No. The Department of Transportation’s Chapter 5 rule defines gravel as “pit-run stone, coarse aggregate, and products of screened stone, crushed stone, or a combination thereof,” and then excludes “sand, silt, clay, and refined by-products that use gravel, including plant-mixed asphalt, cement treated base, and Portland cement concrete.” A fleet that hauls crushed base and plant-mix on the same trucks is inside the tolerance on one commodity and outside it on the other.
Generally yes. W.S. 31-18-203(b) provides that no mobile machinery shall be operated in the state “whether or not upon the public highways of this state, unless registered under this division,” and mobile machinery is defined as heavy equipment used primarily in construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, ditches, buildings or land reclamation. Machinery already listed on a Wyoming property tax assessment roll is exempt from the registration requirement, with the county treasurer issuing a sticker on application and a six-dollar administrative fee. W.S. 31-18-204 lists the further exemptions, and a violation under W.S. 31-18-208 carries up to seven hundred fifty dollars and up to six months for each violation, plus the fee and a ten percent penalty.
There is a written remedy. W.S. 31-18-805(d) provides that where the vehicle is within the gross weight provisions of Table I or Table II but exceeds the axle limits by not more than two thousand pounds, the cargo “may be repositioned by the operator to comply with the legal limits and be allowed to proceed without penalty.” The same subsection covers exceeding the width or length limits by not more than twelve inches, and provides that where a load has shifted in transit and cannot reasonably be repositioned, a permit may be issued.
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.
