Shipment modes
Heavy Freight Shipping: Permits, Axles, and Oversize Equipment
Heavy freight shipping is permits, axle weights, and the trailer that fits the envelope—step deck, RGN, lowboy—not a stretched dry van and a wish.
Updated 2026-08-20 · heavy freight shipping
Heavy freight shipping is the work that starts when a 53-foot dry van and a standard legal load are the wrong tools: excavators, tanks, steel that overweights a van, crates that exceed height, and machinery that only loads from the top or the rear. You are buying permits, routing, and often escorts—not a cheaper FTL.
COL Freight Solutions quotes that file with equipment names (flatbed, step deck, lowboy, RGN) and with the humility that a missed dimension is a rolled truck. Send length, width, height, weight, and how it lifts. We will not invent a one-day SLA or a public permit tariff. The quote is the plan for that piece.
What heavy freight shipping is—and is not
It is oversize, overweight, or both, plus the heavy-haul culture of route surveys and curfews. It is not “we have a heavy pallet on LTL.” A 4,000-pound crate that still fits legal van dimensions is just dense FTL or LTL, not a permit load.
Mexico’s phrase transporte de carga pesada often means the heavy-duty trucking sector itself. In U.S. search, heavy freight shipping leans over-dimensional. Tell COL which problem you have: a legal heavy pallet, or a piece that needs a deck and a permit.
Trailers that make the envelope legal
Flatbeds take many machinery and steel moves. Step decks drop the deck to buy height. Lowboys and RGNs take the tall and the awkward. Conestoga covers weather when you still need side or top load. The wrong trailer is a bridge strike or a refused scale.
Axle counts and spacings are the other half of weight. Adding a jeep or a dolly is an engineering choice, not a dispatcher whim. Photos and certified weights beat estimates from a catalog.
Permits, escorts, and calendars you do not control
State and provincial permits, municipal restrictions, and utility escorts have lead times. A “need it Thursday” tender on a Wednesday morning is how heavy freight shipping sits. Give COL the ready date and the true dimensions on day one.
Route surveys exist because GPS is not a permit. Low wires, banned trucks on a scenic byway, and construction detours kill improvised routing.
USA–Mexico heavy moves need two rulebooks
U.S. oversize and Mexican extra-dimensionada / extra-pesada are not copy-paste. Who pulls which segment, which border, and which Mexican federal rules apply must be named. COL coordinates; we do not pretend a U.S. permit covers the Mexican highway.
Cranes, plant gates, and well-cars at the receiver are part of the quote if the piece cannot roll off. Hide the unload method and the truck will arrive to a party that is not ready.
Start a heavy file with a COL quote
Attach drawings or photos, shipping weight, and lift points. Request a heavy freight shipping quote with equipment proposed, not a dry-van number “just to see.”
Call 561-880-9808. Even project freight can sit beside a steady van book. If the rest of your cadence is recurring FTL/LTL, ask how partnership terms—including the Transportation Cost Recovery Program™ for qualifiers—apply to the highway volume that is not a one-off transformer.
