The Hawaii answer
Legal limits
First escort trigger
What the paper costs
- Single-trip base
- $0 · caveat ↓rev. · read
- Transaction / card
- None published · caveat ↓rev. · read
- How overweight is priced
- Included in the base permit feerev. · read
- Superload above
- The state publishes none
The short version: a Hawaii single-trip permit starts at $0 before bands, overweight and the transaction charge; an escort is first required at over 12' wide; and the load becomes a superload at a gross weight the state does not publish. Everything below carries the Hawaii document it came from, that document's own revision date, and the date we read it.
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.
Hawaii has no road border with another jurisdiction in this corpus.
2. Hawaii legal limits
Anything over one of these needs a permit. Every value links to the document that sets it.
| Measure | Legal limit |
|---|---|
| Width | 9'rev. · read HRS §291-34(a): "Width. No motor vehicle or other power vehicle having an overall width greater than nine feet, including load, shall be operated or moved upon any public road, street, or highway within the State, except as hereinafter provided." EXCLUSIVE ("greater than"), so exactly 9 ft 0 in is legal and 108.1 in is not. NINE FEET IS 108 IN, SIX INCHES WIDER THAN THE 102 IN FEDERAL/MAINLAND NORM AND WIDER THAN EVERY OTHER JURISDICTION IN THIS CORPUS. One carve-out does not need a permit at all: HAR §19-104-15(f) — "Vehicles with width greater than nine feet, including load, may cross state highways at permissible locations (e.g., permitted access points, tractor crossings, intersections, etc.) without permits provided that the other limitations regarding length, height, projection, or weight are not exceeded. These vehicles, when involved in crossing only, are exempt from this chapter." A pure crossing is not a move and is not priced here. |
| Height | 14'rev. · read HRS §291-34(b): "Height. No motor vehicle or other power vehicle having an overall height greater than fourteen feet, including load, shall be operated or moved upon any public road, street, or highway within the State except as hereinafter provided; and provided further that no motor vehicle or other power vehicle shall be operated under or through any bridge or other highway structure if the height of the motor vehicle or other power vehicle exceeds the posted height for the bridge or other highway structure." EXCLUSIVE. 14 FT IS 168 IN — AT OR ABOVE THE MAINLAND NORM, NOT BELOW IT: much of the eastern US runs 13 ft 6 in and most of the west runs 14 ft 0 in, and Hawaii matches the western group (Alaska, for contrast, is 15 ft). THERE IS NO HAWAII HEIGHT TRAP, and the second proviso is the operative constraint in practice — a posted structure governs regardless of the 14 ft figure, and HAR §19-104-17 puts the duty to verify every overhead clearance on the permittee. |
| Semitrailer length | 48'rev. · read HRS §291-34(c)(2)(B): "The length of the semitrailer shall not exceed forty-eight feet in length." EXCLUSIVE. A STANDARD 53 FT SEMITRAILER IS THEREFORE NOT LEGAL IN HAWAII WITHOUT A PERMIT — the single most useful fact in this file, and the opposite of the width finding above. AN AMBIGUITY WE QUOTED AND DID NOT RESOLVE: subsection (B) sits inside the proviso chain under (c)(2), and whether it is a general semitrailer cap or is scoped to the agricultural / public-utility case set out in (c)(2)(A) is ambiguous on the face of the statute. It is encoded as a general cap, which is the reading that protects the carrier at the scale house; the alternative reading would leave Hawaii with no published semitrailer length at all. For completeness from the same subsection: a single vehicle is capped at 45 ft under (c)(1) — "No single motor vehicle or other power vehicle having a total overall length greater than forty-five feet, including load" — and an articulated transit bus gets 82 ft and no more than three units under (c)(2)(C). Neither is evaluated here. |
| Overall length | 65'rev. · read HRS §291-34(c)(3): "No combination of motor vehicles or other power vehicles coupled together shall consist of more than two units and no combination of vehicles having a total overall length greater than sixty-five feet, including load, shall be operated or moved upon any public road, street, or highway other than interstate highways and certain qualifying federal aid highways as designated by the director of transportation." EXCLUSIVE, and OFF-INTERSTATE ONLY — the statute expressly excepts "interstate highways and certain qualifying federal aid highways as designated by the director of transportation", on which Hawaii publishes NO overall combination cap, which is the ordinary federal position. The same figure is stated for a truck-tractor and semitrailer at (c)(2). THE TWO-UNIT LIMIT RIDES WITH IT and is not evaluated: no combination may consist of more than two units, with "A truck-tractor and semitrailer ... regarded as a single unit when determining the number of units in a combination" — so a tractor, a semitrailer and a pup is two units and a third trailer is not permittable as a matter of configuration rather than of length. |
| Kingpin to rear axle | None published |
| Front overhang | None published |
| Rear overhang | None published |
| Gross weight | 80,000 lbrev. · read HRS §291-35(2): "provided that two consecutive sets of tandem axles may carry a gross load of thirty-four thousand pounds each providing the overall distance between the first and last axles of the consecutive sets of tandem axles is thirty-six feet or more and provided also that the overall gross weight does not exceed eighty thousand pounds." EXCLUSIVE. The federal figure, and the federal formula with it: "shall not exceed that resulting from application of the formula: W = 500 (LN/(N-1) + 12N + 36) when the distance between the first and last axles of the group under consideration is over ninety-six inches and where W = maximum weight in pounds carried on any group of two or more axles computed to the nearest five hundred pounds, L = Distance in feet between the extremes of any group of two or more consecutive axles, to the nearest foot, and N = Number of axles in the group." THE ROUNDING IS STATED AND IT IS NOT ALASKA'S: Hawaii rounds L to the NEAREST foot where Alaska rounds L UP to the next whole foot, and both round W to the nearest 500 lb. No state bridge table is held because Hawaii adopts the federal one. Two further caps bind independently of weight and are not evaluated, from (3): no load "that exceeds the carrying capacity of the axles specified by the manufacturer" and no "total weight in excess of its designed capacity as indicated by its designed gross vehicle weights or gross combination weights." |
| Single axle | 20,000 lbrev. · read HRS §291-35(4): "The total gross weight imposed upon the public road, street, or highway by any single axle shall not exceed twenty thousand pounds. For the purpose of this section, axles placed in the same transverse plane and spaced forty inches or less apart shall be considered as one axle." EXCLUSIVE. THE OPERATIVE FIGURE — the statute was amended by L 2023, c 26 and controls over HAR §19-104-21, which has never been conformed and still prints 24,000 lb (held as the closed row below). TWO FIGURES IN THIS SUBSECTION HAVE NO FIELD IN THIS SCHEMA AND ARE NOT EVALUATED: the WHEEL LOAD, from (5) — "The total gross weight imposed upon the public road, street, or highway by any one wheel, either single or dual mounting, shall not exceed ten thousand pounds" (the stale rule says 12,000) — and the 40-INCH AXLE-GROUPING DISTANCE above, which decides whether two axles count as one (the stale rule says 42 inches). A quote states neither a wheel load nor an axle spacing, so recording them here is the whole of what can be done with them. |
| Tandem axle | 34,000 lbrev. · read HRS §291-35(1)(B): "More than forty inches but no more than ninety-six inches, the weight imposed shall not exceed thirty-four thousand pounds. This grouping of two consecutive axles shall be known as tandem axle." EXCLUSIVE on the weight; the spacing band is lower-bound EXCLUSIVE (over 40 in) and upper-bound INCLUSIVE (96 in or less). The federal figure, unlike Wyoming's 36,000. The companion row at (1)(A) governs the tight pair: "Forty inches or less, the weight imposed shall not exceed twenty thousand pounds" — two axles within 40 in are one axle and carry a single axle's weight, which a quote stating only a tandem figure cannot distinguish and which is therefore recorded rather than evaluated. |
3. The Hawaii escort ladder
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.
| When | What is required | Source |
|---|---|---|
| rear overhang over 4' | The count is settled; the source does not say front or rear — at least 1. Published as: “The projection does not extend more than four feet past the extremity of the trailer or semitrailer, or, if it extends more than four feet, an escort vehicle is provided by the owner or operator either to the front or to the rear of the projection to call attention to the projection.”Advisory: THE COUNT IS ONE AND THE STATUTE HANDS THE POSITION TO THE OPERATOR — "either to the front or to the rear" — so front-versus-rear is not a gap in our data, it is a choice Hawaii declines to make. The same sentence appears twice, at HRS §291-34(c)(4)(A)(vi) for self-propelled construction and farm equipment and at (c)(4)(B)(vi) for a motor vehicle with an attached trailer or semitrailer. A SEPARATE AND TIGHTER CAP RIDES WITH IT: (c)(4)(B)(i) requires that "the overall length of the motor vehicle with attached trailer or semitrailer, including the projection, is not greater than sixty feet" — 60 ft INCLUDING the projection, distinct from and 5 ft below the 65 ft overall cap, and this engine does not evaluate it because a quote states no projection-inclusive overall length. |
PRIMARY, from the legislature's own statute h…rev. · read |
| width over 12' | Escorts required; the source states no number — at least 1. Published as: “All vehicles or loads exceeding 12 feet in width shall require an escort vehicle.”Advisory: THE POSITION IS UNPUBLISHED. HAR §19-104-15 says "an escort vehicle" and never says whether it runs ahead of or behind the load, and §19-104-28, the section actually titled "Escort vehicles", specifies the vehicle (a passenger car or a 2-axle truck rated no more than 20,000 lb gross, at least one amber light visible at 500 ft, two-way radio with continuous communication) and its following distance (200 ft at 30 mph or less, 300 ft at 40, 350 ft at 50, 500 ft at 60, 600 ft at 70 or more) without ever stating a position either. Hawaii publishes no front-versus-rear rule at any width. §19-104-28(d) does say "Generally, separate escort vehicle shall be provided ... for each vehicle or load", so a convoy multiplies the floor. The same subsection puts the escort on the permittee: no escort charge here is a Hawaii state fee. Also at this width, §19-104-15(e): a 6 ft by 1 ft "WIDE LOAD" sign with 10-inch black letters on yellow is required, reflective for night movements. |
SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official P…rev. · read secondary host |
| width of 14' or more | Escorts required; the source states no number — at least 1. Published as: “Permits may be issued to move a vehicle or combination of vehicles, empty or with load, 14 feet or wider, provided: ... (3) The maximum operating speed shall be 25 miles per hour; (4) Escort vehicle, flagman or police accompany the move; and (5) A statement is submitted by the moving contractor certifying that the route has been examined and that there will be a clearance of at least 1 foot on each side of the vehicle, equipment or load and any possible obstruction, including traffic signs and markers, existing along the route.”Route survey / engineering review before issueAdvisory: THREE THINGS ARE UNPRICED HERE AND ALL THREE ARE REAL. (1) THE CLASS OF ATTENDANT IS A DISJUNCTION: "Escort vehicle, flagman or police" — one of the three satisfies the rule, and a police escort costs several times a civilian pilot car. Hawaii publishes no threshold that forces police and no police rate, so no police escort is counted or costed. HAR §19-104-15(d) adds pure discretion on top: "The district engineer may require police escort when in his judgment such escort is necessary to ease the flow of traffic or for public safety." (2) THE ROUTE-CLEARANCE CERTIFICATION IS THE CARRIER'S COST, NOT A STATE FEE: the moving contractor must certify that the route was examined and clears by at least 1 ft on each side. Hawaii charges nothing to review it, and we hold no price for performing it. (3) THE 25 MPH CAP IS A SCHEDULE COST. At 25 mph a full-island Oahu move is a multi-hour operation and a Hawaii Island move is a multi-day one; the permit fee does not change but the crew and escort hours do. Note also §19-104-15(a): permits "normally shall be issued for widths up to 14 feet" only where the object "cannot readily be reduced in size and both the length and width exceed 9 feet", or it is a harvested/stored product in transit to processing — a qualifying condition on issuance that this engine does not evaluate. |
SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official P…rev. · read secondary host |
The first trigger in each dimension
| Measurement | First escort trigger | First police escort trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Width | over 12'rev. · read | None published |
| Height | None published | None published |
| Length | None published | None published |
| Rear overhang | over 4'rev. · read | None published |
| Gross weight | None published | None published |
The same rules restated in plain sentences5 rules
- Over 10 ft wide — an escort MAY be required on two-lane mountain or winding coastal roads; Hawaii states this as discretion, not as a requirement — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official PDF is an image-only scan). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (f). Hawaii's ONLY mandatory width-based escort trigger lives here, and it publishes no count and no position. rev. · read
- Over 12 ft wide — at least one escort vehicle is mandatory; Hawaii publishes no count and no front/rear position — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official PDF is an image-only scan). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (f). Hawaii's ONLY mandatory width-based escort trigger lives here, and it publishes no count and no position. rev. · read
- 14 ft wide or wider — an escort vehicle, a flagman OR police must accompany the move, at a 25 mph cap, with a contractor route-clearance certification — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official PDF is an image-only scan). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (f). Hawaii's ONLY mandatory width-based escort trigger lives here, and it publishes no count and no position. rev. · read
- Rear projection more than 4 ft past the trailer extremity — one escort, front OR rear at the operator's choice — PRIMARY, from the legislature's own statute host. Source of the 9 ft width, the 14 ft height, the 45 ft single vehicle, the 48 ft semitrailer, the 65 ft off-Interstate combination, the two-unit limit and the 4 ft projection escort trigger. History tail "am L 2009, c 83, §1" gives a year and no finer date. The host returns HTTP 403 to WebFetch; retrieved with curl under a desktop user-agent. rev. · read
- Any load over a Hawaii legal dimension — discretionary bond/security of unstated amount, mandatory insurance certificate, and permittee-borne clearance assurance — PRIMARY, and READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (k). Subsection (j) is the complete and exclusive fee provision — four line items, $5 / $10 / $25 / $25, and nothing else. Subsection (a) splits permitting authority between the director of transportation and the county engineer; (d) is the discretionary security/bond; (f) makes travel "over sections of the highway not covered by the permit" a violation; (i) lets counties impose stricter rules. History tail "am L 2017, c 115, §4". rev. · read
4. Hawaii single-trip permit fees
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| Single-trip base | $0rev. · read AN AFFIRMATIVE ZERO, NOT A GAP, AND NOT THE PERMIT PRICE. HRS §291-36 was read in full, subsections (a) through (k); subsection (j) is the complete and exclusive fee provision and it states four alternative permit TOTALS rather than a base plus a surcharge: "(1) Single trip permit for loads less than 1.35 times the allowable load or less than 14 feet in width ...... $5. (2) Continuous trip permit for loads less than 1.35 times the allowable load or less than 14 feet in width ...... $10. (3) Overweight permit in excess of 1.35 times the allowable load ...... $25. (4) Oversize permit for width in excess of 14 feet ...... $25. Such fee shall be deposited in the State's account for special funds for highways." Nothing is charged on top of whichever line item applies, so the flat component is zero and the whole charge lives in the fee bands. HIDOT states the envelope in its own words on the Oversized and Overweight Vehicles page: "Permit fee varies from $5.00 to $25.00." |
| Transaction / card | None publishedrev. · read AN AFFIRMATIVE ABSENCE — the fee section WAS read, in full. HRS §291-36 subsections (a) through (k) contain exactly one fee provision, (j), and it lists four line items and nothing else: no transaction, processing, convenience or administrative charge and no percentage surcharge. |
| Route analysis review | $0rev. · read AN AFFIRMATIVE ZERO. HRS §291-36(j) is the exclusive fee provision and names no route, bridge or engineering analysis charge; HAR §19-104-13 adds none. HAR §19-104-22 sends applications beyond the stated conditions "to the construction and maintenance branch for further review" — a referral with no hourly rate and no analysis fee, which is why Hawaii has no superload price to escalate to. The carrier does bear an unpriced route obligation of its own at 14 ft and wider: HAR §19-104-15(b)(5) requires a contractor statement "certifying that the route has been examined and that there will be a clearance of at least 1 foot on each side". That is the carrier's cost, not a state charge. |
| Route with no bridges | $0rev. · read AN AFFIRMATIVE ZERO, and trivially so: Hawaii charges nothing for bridge review on any route, so there is no cheap no-bridge path to distinguish. HAR §19-104-21 does make a bridge a hard stop rather than a priced one — "No vehicle shall be operated over a bridge if the gross weight of the vehicle exceeds the posted load limitation of the bridge, unless the owner first secures a written permit." |
Dimension bands
| Band | Fee |
|---|---|
| Oversize/Overweight application fee waived in full — HIDOT announcement, July 8, 2026 | $0rev. · read THE OPERATIVE PRICE AS OF THE 2026-10-03 RETRIEVAL, AND IT IS A PUBLISHED DATED FACT RATHER THAN A MISSING SCHEDULE. HIDOT Guide to Permits: "Announcement July 8, 2026: Effective immediately all application fees for Use and Occupancy and Oversize/Overweight permits will be waived until further notice." NO DIMENSIONAL BOUNDS ARE SET ON THIS ROW BECAUSE THE ANNOUNCEMENT SETS NONE — it waives all application fees and makes none of the statute's width or weight distinctions. "Until further notice" means there is no end date to encode; this page must be re-read and this row closed with an `effectiveTo` when the waiver is lifted, at which point the two statutory rows below become operative again on their own terms. A permit is still REQUIRED; see `zeroFeePermits`, which is what puts the $0 on the quote as a line rather than as a silence. |
Hawaii has more than one permit issuer. A state total can be complete and still be missing a whole permit.
- City & County of Honolulu (county engineer) — Any part of a move on Oahu that runs on a county road or street rather than a state highway. HRS §291-36(a) gives the permit power to "the county engineer, in the case of county roads and streets", §291-36(i) lets the county "impose restrictions more severe in nature", and the state form states "(THIS PERMIT VALID ON STATE HIGHWAYS ONLY-OTHER ROUTES SUBJECT TO CITY & COUNTY REGULATIONS)". The ordinance basis is ROH ch. 15 "Traffic and Vehicles", art. 21 "Weight, Size, and Load". On Oahu the state system is the H-routes and a handful of numbered highways, so nearly every first and last mile is the county's.. We do not hold this authority's fee schedule, so the leg goes to review rather than being quoted short. Revised Ordinances of Honolulu ch. 15 "Traffic and Vehicles", art. 21 "Weight, Size, and Load"
- County of Maui (Department of Public Works, Development Services Administration) — "Moving Permit" — Any part of a move on Maui, Molokai or Lanai that runs on a county road. County of Maui, Permits: "A Moving permit is required for vehicles traveling on public roads whose dimensions or weights, including loads, or both exceed the limits set by state statutes." The ordinance basis is Maui County Code Title 10, Art. I, ch. 10.68 "Heavy Vehicles and Vehicle Loads".. We do not hold this authority's fee schedule, so the leg goes to review rather than being quoted short. County of Maui — Permits (Moving Permit), MAPPS
- County of Hawaii (county engineer, Department of Public Works) — Any part of a move on Hawaii Island that runs on a county road. The authority is HRS §291-36(a), which names "the county engineer, in the case of county roads and streets"; the county engineer sits in the Department of Public Works.. We do not hold this authority's fee schedule, so the leg goes to review rather than being quoted short. County of Hawaii — Department of Public Works
- County of Kauai (Department of Public Works, Engineering Division) — Any part of a move on Kauai or Niihau that runs on a county road. The authority is HRS §291-36(a); permits are transacted through the county's connect.kauai.gov portal.. We do not hold this authority's fee schedule, so the leg goes to review rather than being quoted short. County of Kauai — Department of Public Works, Engineering Division
5. How Hawaii prices overweight
Included in the base permit fee. HIDOT Guide to Permits, announcement dated July 8, 2026: "Effective immediately all application fees for Use and Occupancy and Oversize/Overweight permits will be waived until further notice." With every application fee waived there is no separate overweight charge to step — the whole permit is $0, and that is a published price rather than an absence. The statutory $25 overweight step is held as the row below with a window closed at 2026-07-07 and becomes operative again if the waiver is lifted.
There is no weight schedule to print, and under this model there is not supposed to be one.
6. Hawaii seasonal posting windows
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.
Hawaii is not in the seasonal-restriction registry, so we hold no posting window for it and are not inventing one.
7. Hawaii's superload threshold
Above one of these, the state stops issuing over the counter and prices the move after an engineering review.
| Trigger | Threshold |
|---|---|
| Gross weight | None published |
| Width | None published |
| Height | None published |
| Length | None published |
| Short axle spacing | Not yet covered |
8. Route survey and bridge review
The dimensions at which Hawaii 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 | Not yet covered |
| Length | Not yet covered |
9. Police escorts
No schedule exists, and that is structural rather than a gap. STRUCTURAL: HAWAII HAS NO STATE POLICE. Law enforcement is COUNTY — Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Maui and Kauaʻi each run their own department — so an escort is a county special-duty detail and there is no state figure to find, the Virginia case with an island geography. HAR 19-104 (read via its chapter index and §§19-104-14, -15 and -26) leaves escorts to the district engineer and states no escort charge; its only fees are the $5.00-$25.00 permit fees, and HDOT's OS/OW permit page says nothing about police at all. The Honolulu Police Department's own Police Escort policy confirms the service and prices it nowhere: officers on "special duty escorts" must verify "proper permits from the Department of Transportation Services of the City and County of Honolulu and/or the Highways Division, Department of Transportation, State of Hawaii" before the move begins, and no rate, minimum or cancellation term appears.
This is a positive finding: we searched and there is nothing to quote. It is not the same as "no police escort is ever required here".
10. When you can move it
Holiday, curfew and night-travel windows are not yet encoded for Hawaii. 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.
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.
12. What this does not include
Named rather than gestured at, because each of these can exceed the permit itself. Every item is listed; open one for why it is excluded.
Line haul, fuel and driver time
This is a permit fee, not a freight rate.
Civilian pilot car rates
We hold no rate data, and the two commercial sites that publish market rates disagree by nearly a factor of two on the same service.
Route-survey engineering
The agency's review fee is shown where the state publishes one; the engineer's own fee is a private cost with no schedule.
Bonds and escrow
Set per move by the agency, and in at least one state the escort is billed at actual cost against it.
Utility coordination and line lifts
Arranged with each utility, priced by each utility.
Second-issuer permits
A toll, bridge or city authority inside the same state issues its own permit, and a state total that omits it is missing a whole permit.
Need a pilot car for this lane? Browse the pilot car & escort directory.
13. Every source behind this page (13)
Every document behind Hawaii13 sources
- County of Hawaii — Department of Public Works — County of Hawaii — Identifies the department in which the county engineer sits, which is the officer HRS §291-36(a) names for county roads. NO OS/OW permit page and NO fee schedule were located. Page carries no date.
undated document · read - County of Kauai — Department of Public Works, Engineering Division — County of Kauai — Identifies the issuing division; permits are transacted through https://connect.kauai.gov/. NO OS/OW fee schedule was located. Page carries no date.
undated document · read - County of Maui — Permits (Moving Permit), MAPPS — County of Maui, Department of Public Works — PRIMARY, and the only county program whose OS/OW description we could quote verbatim from an official page: "A Moving permit is required for vehicles traveling on public roads whose dimensions or weights, including loads, or both exceed the limits set by state statutes." THE PAGE STATES NO FEE. The ordinance basis, Maui County Code Title 10 ch. 10.68 "Heavy Vehicles and Vehicle Loads", could not be read — Municode serves it as a JavaScript shell. The page carries no date.
undated document · read - Haw. Code R. §19-104-13 — Permit fees — Hawaii Administrative Rules, via Cornell Legal Information Institute — SECONDARY, AND NECESSARILY SO — the official HIDOT PDF of HAR ch. 19-104 is an image-only scan with no text layer (24 bytes of extractable text), so Cornell LII's mirror is the only readable copy. Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981] (Auth: HRS Sec. 291-36) (Imp: HRS Sec. 291-36)". READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (d): it restates the $5 / $10 / $25 / $25 schedule identically to HRS § 291-36(j) — the available cross-check, and it holds on all four amounts — and adds only payment methods, periodic billing, and "Fees shall be waived for governmental agencies."
rev. · read secondary host - Haw. Code R. §19-104-15 — Overwidth — Hawaii Administrative Rules, via Cornell Legal Information Institute — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror; the official PDF is an image-only scan). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (f). Hawaii's ONLY mandatory width-based escort trigger lives here, and it publishes no count and no position.
rev. · read secondary host - Haw. Code R. §19-104-17 — Overheight — Hawaii Administrative Rules, via Cornell Legal Information Institute — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". READ IN FULL — the entire substantive rule is two sentences, and neither contains a number. This is the source of the height-escort and height-superload absences.
rev. · read secondary host - Haw. Code R. §19-104-21 — Legal limitations (SUPERSEDED by HRS §291-35) — Hawaii Administrative Rules, via Cornell Legal Information Institute — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror), and STALE. Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". States a 24,000 lb single axle, a 12,000 lb wheel load and a 42-inch axle-grouping distance against the statute's 20,000 / 10,000 / 40 inches. Held on file with a closed effective window so the file can say "this was the rule and is no longer"; see HAR_SUPERSEDED_TO.
rev. · read secondary host - Haw. Code R. §19-104-22 — Overweight permits — Hawaii Administrative Rules, via Cornell Legal Information Institute — SECONDARY (Cornell LII mirror). Stamped "[Eff. MAY 30 1981]". Source of the bridge-type multiplier table in which 1.35 is the H20-bridge factor, of the permit ceiling "shall not exceed 48,000 pounds in the case of a single axle or 84,000 pounds for a tandem axle", and of the unpriced referral "to the construction and maintenance branch for further review".
rev. · read secondary host - HIDOT Highways Division — Guide to Permits (fee-waiver announcement) — Hawaii Department of Transportation, Highways Division — PRIMARY. The announcement dates itself: "Announcement July 8, 2026: Effective immediately all application fees for Use and Occupancy and Oversize/Overweight permits will be waived until further notice." No end date is stated, so this page must be re-read before the waiver row is relied on.
rev. · read - HRS §291-34 — Size of vehicles; width, height, and length — Hawaii State Legislature (capitol.hawaii.gov) — PRIMARY, from the legislature's own statute host. Source of the 9 ft width, the 14 ft height, the 45 ft single vehicle, the 48 ft semitrailer, the 65 ft off-Interstate combination, the two-unit limit and the 4 ft projection escort trigger. History tail "am L 2009, c 83, §1" gives a year and no finer date. The host returns HTTP 403 to WebFetch; retrieved with curl under a desktop user-agent.
rev. · read - HRS §291-35 — Gross weight, axle, and wheel loads — Hawaii State Legislature (capitol.hawaii.gov) — PRIMARY. Source of the 20,000 lb single axle, the 34,000 lb tandem, the 80,000 lb gross, the 10,000 lb wheel load, the 40-inch axle-grouping distance and the federal bridge formula with its stated rounding. History tail "am L 2020, c 70, §41; am L 2023, c 26, §1" — last amended 2023, year only. THIS SECTION IS WHAT SUPERSEDES HAR § 19-104-21.
rev. · read - HRS §291-36 — Exceptions (oversize/overweight permits and fee schedule) — Hawaii State Legislature (capitol.hawaii.gov) — PRIMARY, and READ IN FULL, subsections (a) through (k). Subsection (j) is the complete and exclusive fee provision — four line items, $5 / $10 / $25 / $25, and nothing else. Subsection (a) splits permitting authority between the director of transportation and the county engineer; (d) is the discretionary security/bond; (f) makes travel "over sections of the highway not covered by the permit" a violation; (i) lets counties impose stricter rules. History tail "am L 2017, c 115, §4".
rev. · read - Revised Ordinances of Honolulu ch. 15 "Traffic and Vehicles", art. 21 "Weight, Size, and Load" — City & County of Honolulu, via American Legal Publishing — SECONDARY, AND NOT RETRIEVED. amlegal returned HTTP 403 to WebFetch and to curl with a desktop user-agent for ROH §15-21.8 and ROH §25-5.4. The ordinance chapter is identified; its text and any fee schedule are NOT on file. That is a gap in our research, not a finding about Honolulu.
undated document · read secondary host
Questions
How much is an oversize permit in Hawaii?
The single-trip base is $0, before the dimension bands, the overweight component and the transaction charge. The base alone is rarely what is paid.
When does Hawaii require a pilot car?
The first width trigger is over 12'.
What is a superload in Hawaii?
Hawaii publishes no gross-weight superload threshold in the documents on file — see the superload section, which shows the dimensional triggers it does publish.