Why It’s Important to Know the Company Doing Your Overweight Hauling

Ground transportation is the backbone of the world’s supply chain economy. While a lot of equipment and merchandise is transported by plane or by ship, transporting goods by truck is the most common and most important form of supply transportation. This goes for overweight hauling and HAZMAT shipping as well.

What constitutes overweight hauling varies by state, country and jurisdiction, but as a rule of thumb, any truck with a gross weight (i.e., everything is included) over 80,000 pounds or a container weight over 44,000 pounds qualifies as overweight hauling.

Here are some questions you could ask a company you’re considering for your overweight hauling.

Do you have experience in overweight hauling?

This is probably the most important question you’re going to ask a prospective overweight hauling company. Overweight hauling is an extremely complicated process with extensive protocols, laws and safety measures that must be taken. An experienced company would be well versed in all these things and would likely perform better than an inexperienced company.

Have you traveled through the area that my overweight load needs to go through before?

Part of successful overweight hauling is rooted in familiarity. Every state has different laws regarding overweight hauling, and that means that different permits for each state need to be pulled. If you live in South Carolina and need something overweight like oiling equipment shipped to Texas, it would be helpful to know that the company you’re working with has pulled permits in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas before.

Do you map out alternate routes before setting out?

Pulling the correct permits and knowing the areas they’re traveling through is great, but a great overweight hauling company prepares for the unexpected. This is because a lot of the permits they will pull will specify which roads overweight hauling vehicles are allowed to drive on. If the driver misses an exit or runs into unexpected construction, having a viable and legal alternate route is paramount. Driving an overweight load on a road illegally can lead to costly fines and delays, which are things you want to avoid.

Have you ever had a driver fined before?

If a company has been hauling overweight materials for a while, there’s a good chance one of their drivers has been fined for one reason or another. That’s not the reason you should ask this question though.

If the company answers “Yes,” you should be listening to see what measures they took to avoid the problem from happening again. Maybe the driver didn’t read all the permits thoroughly, which led to a fine, and now everyone is required to closely read all the requisite permits before they hit the road. A company who learns from their mistakes is one you want to hire.

What safety measures do you take?

There are certain laws regarding overweight hauling and their respective safety precautions, and you should familiarize yourself with those—but any overweight hauling company needs to know state and federal laws regarding load security, and it must tailor each safety plan to each specific load. A company must also be well versed in safe driving practices to get your heavy load to its destination safely.

Call for heavy load hauling today

Whether it’s overweight hauling or HAZMAT shipping that you need, give us a call at All Points Transport. We specialize in HAZMAT shipping and overweight hauling, and we’re dedicated to helping you get your materials where they need to go quickly and safely.

Categorised in: Hazmat Shipping, Overweight Hauling