The short version: a Delaware single-trip permit starts at $30 before bands, overweight and the transaction charge; an escort is first required at over 13' wide; and the load becomes a superload at a gross weight the state does not publish. Everything below carries the Delaware document it came from, that document's own revision date, and the date we read it.
Corridor
1. Where the load goes next
The jurisdictions this one borders, each chip carrying the fact that decides whether that crossing is the expensive one — so the row is itself a small comparison. A multi-state lane is the actual job, and from here it is one click per state rather than a return to an alphabetical index.
Anything over one of these needs a permit. Every value links to the document that sets it.
Measure
Legal limit
Width
8'6"rev. · read §2.2.1: "If the overall width of any vehicle or combination of vehicles exceeds 8 feet - 6 inches measured as defined below, a permit shall be required." EXCLUSIVE — exactly 8 ft 6 in needs no permit. WHAT 8 FT 6 IN MEANS DIFFERS BY ROAD AND BOTH READINGS ARE 102 IN, so this is one row rather than two: on Interstate and US routes the figure "is exclusive of safety equipment, which may extend not more than 3 inches more on each side" (§2.2.2), while on all other highways "no vehicle including any load thereon shall exceed a total outside width of 8 feet - 6 inches INCLUSIVE of safety devices" (§2.2.3). A load 8 ft 10 in across including mirrors is legal on I-95 and over the limit on a state road, and this model carries one width, so the stricter inclusive reading is what a caller's measurement is tested against.
Height
13'6"rev. · read §2.3: "On any Interstate, U.S. Route, or highway if the maximum height of any vehicle or combination of vehicles, including load thereon, exceeds 13 feet - 6 inches a permit shall be required." EXCLUSIVE, and the federal-norm 13 ft 6 in with no road-class variation — one of the few dimensions Delaware states once and once only.
Semitrailer length
53'rev. · read §2.1.2.1: "The maximum length of a semitrailer, including any load thereon, exclusive of truck tractor size shall be 53 feet." EXCLUSIVE. A TWIN is different and stricter: §2.1.2.3 caps "a trailer or semi-trailer in a truck tractor-semitrailer-trailer combination, including any load thereon, exclusive of tractor size" at 29 FEET, which this model has no second field for and which is not evaluated.
Overall length
None published
Kingpin to rear axle
None published
Front overhang
3'rev. · read §2.1.4: "No vehicle or combination of vehicles shall carry any load extending more than 3 feet beyond the front thereof." EXCLUSIVE.
Rear overhang
6'rev. · read §2.1.4: "The maximum overhang shall not exceed 6 feet beyond the rear of the vehicle and no load shall be permitted to touch or drag upon the roadway regardless of permissible overhang." EXCLUSIVE. A COMMODITY EXCEPTION IS RECORDED AND NOT APPLIED: §2.1.5 allows 10 FEET for "Pilings or poles or mill logs, or nursery stock, or rowing shells, or steel beams, pipes, angles, channels and other length or steel, or other metal, or other articles impossible of dismemberment". This model carries no commodity dimension, so encoding 10 ft would drop a real permit requirement on every load that is not one of those things; 6 ft is the general limit and the 10 ft allowance must be claimed by hand.
Gross weight
80,000 lbrev. · read Table 2.1, "Combination Vehicles": "3 axle vehicle: Maximum gross weight 60,000 lbs.; 4 axle vehicle: Maximum gross weight 70,000 lbs.; 5 axle vehicle: Maximum gross weight 80,000 lbs." 80,000 lb is the five-axle row and the operative legal gross for a heavy-haul combination. THE LOWER ROWS ARE RECORDED AND NOT APPLIED — the schema has no axle-count selector on a legal-limit row. DO NOT CONFUSE THIS TABLE WITH THE FEE BASE: §3.2.1.2.1 computes the overweight charge over a DIFFERENT axle-count table (2 axles 40,000 / 3 axles 65,000 / 4 axles 73,280 / 5+ axles 80,000), which agrees with Table 2.1 only at five axles. One table decides whether a permit is needed; the other decides what it costs.
Single axle
20,000 lbrev. · read Table 2.1, Interstate column: "20,000 lbs. on any 1 axle". THE SAME TABLE ALSO PRINTS 22,400 LB FOR OTHER HIGHWAYS — "All Vehicles - Maximum single axle load 22,400 lbs." — and that figure is RECORDED HERE AND NOT APPLIED. The two are about two different roads rather than two readings of one rule, so encoding both as unconditioned rows would make them disagree and block every Delaware quote; `Sourced.appliesWhen` could confine them, but Delaware's own carve-out is for "Interstate, U.S. Route" and the shared route vocabulary has no `us-route` class to name it with. 20,000 lb is also the figure the STATUTE states flatly and without a road qualifier, so it is the defensible single value and the conservative one.
Tandem axle
34,000 lbrev. · read Table 2.1: "34,000 lbs. between any tandem or coupled axles spaced less than 8ft apart at their extreme". The federal figure, and NO TRAP HERE — unlike Wyoming's 36,000 lb, Delaware uses the corpus norm and the two sources agree.
Not one number per dimension — the whole staircase. Each row is a condition the state actually publishes, what it requires when that condition holds, and the clause it comes from. Where a rule requires escorts and the source states no number, the row says that in the source's own words rather than reporting no requirement.
1 certified escort1 behindAdvisory: §4.6.1.7: "Vehicles and loads with a rear overhang of 15 feet or more shall have 1 rear escort UNLESS THE PERMIT SPECIFIES OTHERWISE." The escort is the default and DelDOT may waive it on the face of the permit, so this line can come off at issuance. It is quoted as required because that is the published default.
1 police escort in frontCannot be reduced to a number: §4.6.1.4: "A separate state police escort (third escort) is required for vehicles and loads more than 15 feet in width." Delaware requires a DELAWARE STATE POLICE escort here as a THIRD escort, on top of the two civilian pilot cars. THE PERMIT RULE PRICES NONE OF IT AND THE POLICE PRICE ALL OF IT: no hourly figure, no minimum call-out, no mileage charge and no administrative fee appears in 2 DE Admin. Code 2405 or on DelDOT's OSOW FAQ, while the Delaware State Police Escort Fee Schedule that DelDOT hosts at deldot.gov/osow/DSPEscortInformation.pdf states "$68.00 per hour, 1.5 hour minimum, for each Trooper" and, separately, "$16.25 per hour, 1.5 hours minimum, for each Patrol Vehicle". The computable FLOOR is therefore 1.5 x $68.00 = $102.00 per trooper and `escortCost.ts` carries it; the patrol-vehicle hour is NOT blended into that figure, because the schedule publishes no officer-to-vehicle ratio, so it is recorded there as an unpriced component instead. No trooper cost is included in the permit total above — the sourced police channel and the permit fees never touch. §4.6.1 also does not say whether the trooper leads or trails, so the position encoded here is a placeholder for the COUNT and must not be read as Delaware's published position. One saving is available and should be checked before pricing: §4.6.1.10 — "A single Delaware State Police escort can escort 2 or more loads in a single move if the loads are moved at the same time, other required escorts are available as stated above, and communication is present between the loads." The escort requirement is real; its cost must be confirmed with Delaware State Police before this move is quoted.
1 police escort in frontCannot be reduced to a number: §4.6.1.6: "A separate state police escort (third escort) is required for vehicles and loads 17 feet - 6 inches or more in height." INCLUSIVE — at exactly 17 ft 6 in the trooper is required. Delaware requires a DELAWARE STATE POLICE escort here as a THIRD escort, on top of the two civilian pilot cars. THE PERMIT RULE PRICES NONE OF IT AND THE POLICE PRICE ALL OF IT: no hourly figure, no minimum call-out, no mileage charge and no administrative fee appears in 2 DE Admin. Code 2405 or on DelDOT's OSOW FAQ, while the Delaware State Police Escort Fee Schedule that DelDOT hosts at deldot.gov/osow/DSPEscortInformation.pdf states "$68.00 per hour, 1.5 hour minimum, for each Trooper" and, separately, "$16.25 per hour, 1.5 hours minimum, for each Patrol Vehicle". The computable FLOOR is therefore 1.5 x $68.00 = $102.00 per trooper and `escortCost.ts` carries it; the patrol-vehicle hour is NOT blended into that figure, because the schedule publishes no officer-to-vehicle ratio, so it is recorded there as an unpriced component instead. No trooper cost is included in the permit total above — the sourced police channel and the permit fees never touch. §4.6.1 also does not say whether the trooper leads or trails, so the position encoded here is a placeholder for the COUNT and must not be read as Delaware's published position. One saving is available and should be checked before pricing: §4.6.1.10 — "A single Delaware State Police escort can escort 2 or more loads in a single move if the loads are moved at the same time, other required escorts are available as stated above, and communication is present between the loads." The escort requirement is real; its cost must be confirmed with Delaware State Police before this move is quoted.
1 police escort in frontCannot be reduced to a number: §4.6.1.5: "Vehicles and loads 120 feet or more in length are required to have a separate state police escort (third escort)." INCLUSIVE — at exactly 120 ft the trooper is required, and the load is also a superload at that length. Delaware requires a DELAWARE STATE POLICE escort here as a THIRD escort, on top of the two civilian pilot cars. THE PERMIT RULE PRICES NONE OF IT AND THE POLICE PRICE ALL OF IT: no hourly figure, no minimum call-out, no mileage charge and no administrative fee appears in 2 DE Admin. Code 2405 or on DelDOT's OSOW FAQ, while the Delaware State Police Escort Fee Schedule that DelDOT hosts at deldot.gov/osow/DSPEscortInformation.pdf states "$68.00 per hour, 1.5 hour minimum, for each Trooper" and, separately, "$16.25 per hour, 1.5 hours minimum, for each Patrol Vehicle". The computable FLOOR is therefore 1.5 x $68.00 = $102.00 per trooper and `escortCost.ts` carries it; the patrol-vehicle hour is NOT blended into that figure, because the schedule publishes no officer-to-vehicle ratio, so it is recorded there as an unpriced component instead. No trooper cost is included in the permit total above — the sourced police channel and the permit fees never touch. §4.6.1 also does not say whether the trooper leads or trails, so the position encoded here is a placeholder for the COUNT and must not be read as Delaware's published position. One saving is available and should be checked before pricing: §4.6.1.10 — "A single Delaware State Police escort can escort 2 or more loads in a single move if the loads are moved at the same time, other required escorts are available as stated above, and communication is present between the loads." The escort requirement is real; its cost must be confirmed with Delaware State Police before this move is quoted.
$30rev. · read §3.2.1.1, Load Code 1 Oversize, verbatim: "3.2.1.1.1 A load that is Oversize but less than SUPERLOAD criteria. ... 3.2.1.1.2 Type - Single Trip. 3.2.1.1.3 Fee - $30.00. 3.2.1.1.4 Duration - 5 days." THE SAME $30 IS THE BASE OF THE OVERWEIGHT LOAD CODE TOO ("Fee - $30.00 plus weight fee ..."), so a load that is both oversize and overweight pays ONE $30 plus the weight increment, not two — see `combinedFeeRule`, where the band's flat component is zero precisely so the $30 is counted once. OTHER SINGLE-TRIP LOAD CODES, recorded and not applied because they are different products: Load Code 4 Manufactured Housing "Fee - $30.00" (§3.2.1.4.3); Load Code 5 Sealed Container "$30.00 plus weight fee of $10.00 for each 8,000 lbs. or portion thereof over legal weight" (§3.2.1.5.3); Load Code 7 "Fee - $30.00" (§3.2.1.7.3); Load Code 10 "Fee - $60.00" (§3.2.1.10.3). THE STATUTE STATES A DIFFERENT AND MUCH OLDER FIGURE AND IT IS NOT USED: 21 Del. C. §4504 provides that the fee for an interstate permit "shall be $1.00 per single trip permit". The same section delegates fee-setting to DelDOT — recited at 2405 §1.2.1, "Chapter 45, Section 4504 of Title 21 of the Delaware Code delegate's authority to the Delaware Department of Transportation to establish such rules and regulations INCLUDING THE SETTING OF FEES" — so the $30 regulatory fee governs and the $1.00 is a relic. It is recorded, not encoded: a second row at $1.00 would conflict every Delaware quote over a price nobody charges. LOCAL PERMITS CAN ADD ON TOP: §1.2.2, "As authorized in Chapter 45, Section 4504 of Title 21 of the Delaware Code, local authorities may issue a special permit that may have different requirements from those set forth herein. Every such permit shall be laid only upon highways under [their jurisdiction]." No local amounts are published anywhere and no second-issuer row is held — see the header for why.
Transaction / card
None publishedrev. · read A SOURCED ZERO, NOT AN EMPTY LIST — the fee section was read in full and affirmatively charges nothing on top. 2 DE Admin. Code 2405 was searched for "processing fee", "service fee", "transaction fee", "convenience fee" and "administrative fee": ZERO HITS. Nothing in §3.2.1 adds a flat issuance charge or a percentage. Connecticut, next door, adds a mandatory $12 electronic transmittal fee to the same $30 base; Delaware does not, and the difference is published rather than inferred.
Graduated weight bands. 2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §3.2.1.2, Load Code 2 Overweight, verbatim: "3.2.1.2.1 A load that is over legal weight: (Legal GVW for 2 axles = 40K lbs.; 3 axles = 65K lbs.; 4 axles = 73280 lbs.; 5 or more axles = 80K lbs) but less than SUPERLOAD criteria. Load may be oversize but under limits of SUPERLOAD. 3.2.1.2.2 Type - Single Trip. 3.2.1.2.3 Fee - $30.00 plus weight fee of $10.00 for each 8,000 lbs. or portion thereof over legal weight. 3.2.1.2.4 Duration - 5 days." A flat base plus a stepped increment — NOT per-mile, NOT per ton-mile, NOT per axle. The increment is 8,000 lb, not 1,000; the step is $10.00; a part increment is charged in full ("or portion thereof"); there is no stated maximum, which is an affirmative absence rather than an unknown.
A permit priced against an unposted-road assumption in March is simply wrong, and wrong in the expensive direction. This is the window we watch, the basis for that window in the state's own orders or statute, and the authority that posts it.
Delaware is not in the seasonal-restriction registry, so we hold no posting window for it and are not inventing one.
Superload
7. Delaware's superload threshold
Above one of these, the state stops issuing over the counter and prices the move after an engineering review.
15' or morerev. · read §5.1.1: "Width - 15 feet or greater." Corroborated by the definitions section's "15 feet or more in width". INCLUSIVE — at exactly 15 ft the load is a superload, though the POLICE escort does not attach until MORE THAN 15 ft (§4.6.1.4). Those are two different thresholds on the same dimension with two different operators and both are encoded as written.
Height
15' or morerev. · read §5.1.1: "Height - 15 feet or greater." Corroborated by the definitions section's "15 feet or more in height". 15 FT, NOT 16 — Maryland's 2008 manual uses 16 ft and Connecticut uses 16 ft, so Delaware is a foot stricter than both its neighbours and a 15 ft 6 in load that is an ordinary permit in Maryland is a superload here. The same 15 ft also triggers two civilian escorts (§4.6.1.6) and routing to the DelDOT Signal Supervisor.
Length
120' or morerev. · read §5.1.1: "Length - 120 feet or greater." Corroborated by the definitions section's "120 feet or more in length". INCLUSIVE, and the same 120 ft is the police-escort trigger in §4.6.1.5 — the only one of Delaware's three police thresholds that coincides exactly with a superload trigger.
The dimensions at which Delaware triggers a physical route inspection or an engineering review, and what the agency charges to review it.
Measurement
Inspection / review trigger
Width
Not yet covered
Height
15' or moreundated document · read DelDOT's OSOW FAQ: permits "15 feet or greater in height are routed to the DelDOT Signal Supervisor for review" — a real, published, pre-issuance review of overhead clearance, with no fee attached to it anywhere. INCLUSIVE. It coincides with the 15 ft superload height trigger, so in practice every load that hits it is already a superload.
Length
Not yet covered
Police escorts
9. Police escorts
Delaware State Police publishes a rate. One officer costs at least $102 before mileage.
"Hauler will be charged $16.25 per hour, 1.5 hours minimum, for each Patrol Vehicle." A SEPARATE CHARGE FROM THE OFFICER'S, and the schedule publishes no officer-to-vehicle ratio, so it cannot be folded into the hourly figure. At one car per trooper it would add $24.38 to the floor below and $16.25 to every hour beyond the minimum.
Time over the 1.5-hour minimum is billed in half-hour increments for the trooper and for the patrol vehicle alike, so the charged hours are rounded up rather than actual.
"If flares are used for the job, the Hauler will be billed $36.00 per box of 36 flares." Whether flares are used is decided on the road.
"The Delaware State Police reserves the right to charge a reasonable amount for any other equipment or costs associated with providing police services under the Contract." An open-ended term, and the schedule states no cancellation charge at all — which is unknown here, not nil.
§4.6.1.10 lets one trooper cover several loads moved together — "A single Delaware State Police escort can escort 2 or more loads in a single move if the loads are moved at the same time" — so a multi-load move may be cheaper per load than this floor implies. The booking also needs 48 hours' notice to the Special Duty Officer.
Holiday, curfew and night-travel windows are not yet encoded for Delaware. The seasonal picture — which is a different question — is in section 6 above.
Why those windows are absent rather than estimated
They are not guessed at here. What we do publish is the seasonal weight-restriction picture, with the date we last read each state's own bulletin — a curfew invented from a plausible pattern is worth less than an honest gap, because a reader cannot tell the two apart on the page.
Who issues it
11. Permit office
The agency behind each figure above is linked from that figure. We publish no per-state permit-office phone number.
Why there is no phone number here
We are not publishing per-state permit-office phone numbers yet, and the reason is worth stating: the two seed lists available for them are both demonstrably stale — the federal one gives two different states the same phone number — and a wrong number on a page like this costs somebody a morning. The agency behind each figure above is linked from that figure, which is the part we can stand behind today.
Source conflicts
12. Where the sources disagree
Two official documents, both in effect, giving different answers. Neither has been adopted.
superload gross-weight threshold
over 120,000 lb2 DE Admin. Code 2405, Definitions — "Superload" — PRIMARY. Definitions section: a superload exists when any one condition holds — "15 feet or more in width; 15 feet or more in height; 120 feet or more in length; has a gross weight IN EXCESS OF 120,000 pounds." The weight limb is EXCLUSIVE here and inclusive in §5.1.1. rev. · read
120,000 lb or more2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §5 — superload processing, bridge review and cost reimbursement — PRIMARY. §5.1.1 superload characteristics (weight limb INCLUSIVE — "120,000 lbs. or greater"), §5.1.2 superload types, §5.2.1 case-by-case handling, §5.6.5 the 25,000 lb automatic bridge-review trigger, §5.6.6 actual-cost reimbursement with a pre-move estimate. rev. · read
2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §2 — Oversize/Overweight Hauling Permit Policy and Procedures Manual, legal size and weight — Delaware Department of Transportation, Division of Transportation Solutions — PRIMARY, from DelDOT's own host. §2.1-§2.3 and Table 2.1. The PDF prints its Delaware Register version history — "20 DE Reg. 194 (09/01/16); 21 DE Reg. 585 (01/01/18); 23 DE Reg. 326 (10/01/19); 26 DE Reg. 408 (11/01/22)" — and the last entry is the date used for revisedOn. regulations.delaware.gov, the Register's own site, is a JavaScript application that returns an empty shell to a fetcher and could not serve the text. rev. · read
2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §3.2.1 — single-trip permit load codes and fees — Delaware Department of Transportation, Division of Transportation Solutions — PRIMARY. Load Code 1 oversize §3.2.1.1, Load Code 2 overweight §3.2.1.2, Load Code 3 superload §3.2.1.3. Source of the $30 base, the $60 superload base, the $10-per-8,000-lb increment, the "or portion thereof" rounding and the axle-count-dependent fee base in §3.2.1.2.1. rev. · read
2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §4.6.1 — escort vehicle requirements — Delaware Department of Transportation, Division of Transportation Solutions — PRIMARY. §4.6.1.1-§4.6.1.11, the whole escort ladder including the three Delaware State Police thresholds and the §4.6.1.8 combination rule. rev. · read
2 DE Admin. Code 2405 §5 — superload processing, bridge review and cost reimbursement — Delaware Department of Transportation, Division of Transportation Solutions — PRIMARY. §5.1.1 superload characteristics (weight limb INCLUSIVE — "120,000 lbs. or greater"), §5.1.2 superload types, §5.2.1 case-by-case handling, §5.6.5 the 25,000 lb automatic bridge-review trigger, §5.6.6 actual-cost reimbursement with a pre-move estimate. rev. · read
2 DE Admin. Code 2405, Definitions — "Superload" — Delaware Department of Transportation, Division of Transportation Solutions — PRIMARY. Definitions section: a superload exists when any one condition holds — "15 feet or more in width; 15 feet or more in height; 120 feet or more in length; has a gross weight IN EXCESS OF 120,000 pounds." The weight limb is EXCLUSIVE here and inclusive in §5.1.1. rev. · read
21 Del. C. Ch. 45 §§4502-4504 — size, weight and load; special permits — Delaware Code, State of Delaware — PRIMARY, statute, UNDATED — delcode.delaware.gov carries no date on the chapter. §4503 states the 20,000 lb single-axle and 34,000 lb tandem prohibitions. §4504 delegates fee-setting to DelDOT, which is what makes the regulatory $30 govern over the statutory $1.00 single-trip interstate fee in the same section. undated document · read
DelDOT OSOW Permit System — Frequently Asked Questions — Delaware Department of Transportation — PRIMARY (agency web), UNDATED — the page states no revision date, so revisedOn is null and the row takes the rule's effective date. Corroborates the fee ("Currently the minimum cost for a permit is $30.00 ($60.00 for a Superload)" and "$10.00 for every 8,000 pounds (or portion thereof) for weight over the legal weight limit"), states the 15 ft Signal Supervisor routing, and is the 28,000 lb side of the bridge-review contradiction. undated document · read
Common questions
Questions
How much is an oversize permit in Delaware?
The single-trip base is $30, before the dimension bands, the overweight component and the transaction charge. The base alone is rarely what is paid.
When does Delaware require a pilot car?
The first width trigger is over 13'.
What is a superload in Delaware?
Delaware publishes no gross-weight superload threshold in the documents on file — see the superload section, which shows the dimensional triggers it does publish.
Do Delaware's own documents contradict each other?
Yes, in 1 place(s) we hold both documents for. They are set out in full above, each with its pinpoint citation, and none of them has been adopted.