The short version: a Pennsylvania single-trip permit starts at $0 before bands, overweight and the transaction charge; an escort is first required at over 13' wide; and the load becomes a superload at over 201,000 lb. Everything below carries the Pennsylvania 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 §4921: "The total outside width of a vehicle, including any load, shall not exceed eight feet six inches except as otherwise provided in this section."
Height
13'6"rev. · read §4922: "No vehicle, including any load, shall exceed a height of 13 feet 6 inches." The section adds that public authorities are not required to provide clearance for it.
Semitrailer length
53'rev. · read §4923: "The length of a single trailer being towed by a truck or truck tractor shall not exceed 53 feet." A 41 ft kingpin-to-rear-axle limit also applies and is not modelled — a quote does not collect the kingpin distance.
Overall length
None published
Kingpin to rear axle
None published
Front overhang
None published
Rear overhang
None published
Gross weight
80,000 lbrev. · read §4941: "no combination driven upon a highway shall have a gross weight exceeding 80,000 pounds, or the applicable weight set as forth in subsection (b) or (c), whichever is less." §4941(d) allows a natural-gas or battery-electric vehicle up to 2,000 lb more, limited to the qualifying equipment-weight difference; powertrain is not collected on a quote, so the allowance is recorded and not applied.
Single axle
20,000 lbrev. · read §4943(1): "The maximum axle weight upon a steering axle shall not exceed 20,000 pounds", and a combination over 73,280 lb may not exceed 20,000 lb on any single non-steering axle. Every axle is additionally capped at the lesser of this and the manufacturer's rated capacity, which a quote does not collect.
Tandem axle
34,000 lbrev. · read From the Chapter 185 Bridge Formula Table, "For Determining Maximum Axle Weights When Registered and Gross Weight Exceed 73,280 Pounds": a 2-axle group at 4 ft centre-to-centre is 34,000 lb. Pennsylvania publishes NO universal tandem figure independent of spacing — group limits rise with spacing — so 34,000 lb is the closest-spaced case and is a floor, not a general rule.
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
width from 13' (exclusive) to 14' and overall length from 90' (exclusive) to 120'
1 certified escortAdvisory: 75 Pa.C.S. §4962(f.2): a load over 13 ft but not over 14 ft wide needs only ONE pilot car even where its length would otherwise add a second, and "the position of the pilot car to the front or rear of the permitted vehicle may be determined by the department".
Over 13 ft but not over 14 ft wide and over 90 ft but not over 120 ft long — one pilot car only, positioned front or rear by PennDOT — amended 2014-06-30, effective 60 days laterrev. · read
Super load, or a building over 16 ft wide — police escort requirement, on which the regulation and the later statute disagree — amended 2015-10-30, effective 60 days laterrev. · read
$0rev. · read The single-trip rows print one banded amount ("$46 (If < 14' wide) + .04 ton-mile for overweight") with no separate issuance charge. The whole oversize fee is in `oversizeFeeBands`.
Transaction / card
$1rev. · read Applies to APRAS electronic-access transactions, which is how single-trip permits are ordinarily issued. Pennsylvania publishes no percentage surcharge.
Route analysis review
Not yet covered
Route with no bridges
Not yet covered
Dimension bands
Band
Fee
under 14 ft wide — PennDOT current schedule
$46rev. · read Row "66 - A Vehicle (Oversize) Single Trip $46 (If < 14' wide)". The notation is strictly "< 14'", so a load of exactly 14 ft is NOT in this band.
over 14 ft wide — PennDOT current schedule
$97rev. · read "$97 (If > 14' wide)". Strictly "> 14'", so a load of exactly 14 ft is not in this band either — the current PDF assigns that width to no band at all.
up to 14 ft wide, within legal weight — 75 Pa.C.S. §1942 statutory amount
$35rev. · read "(1) Oversize vehicle or load, or both, having a width up to 14 feet and not exceeding legal weight limit, $35." THE WEIGHT CLAUSE IS A CONDITION ON THE AMOUNT, not scenery, and it is now encoded as `withinLegalWeightOnly` — so this row no longer competes with PennDOT's schedule on an OVERWEIGHT load, for which §1942(a)(1) is not the governing subsection at all. Retained, not discarded: §1904 CPI-adjusts every Title 75 fee every 24 months and PennDOT's adjusted figure is $46, but §1942 has not been amended and still prints $35. Both are official for a load WITHIN legal weight; the engine reports the spread rather than choosing.
over 14 ft wide, within legal weight — 75 Pa.C.S. §1942 statutory amount
$71rev. · read "(2) Oversize vehicle or load, or both, having a width exceeding 14 feet and not exceeding ANY legal weight limit, $71." The CPI-adjusted counterpart is $97, and the two are a real disagreement ONLY for a load within legal weight — which is why the weight clause is encoded as `withinLegalWeightOnly` rather than dropped. An overweight load owes §1942(a)(3) instead, cumulatively under §1942(b), and PennDOT's own single-trip row prints exactly that pairing: "$97 (If > 14' wide) + .04 ton-mile for overweight".
Rounding is not a detail here: the same rate over the same miles can differ by a whole increment depending on which pounds are rounded and in which direction, so the rule is printed with the source's own words rather than applied silently.
Gross weight
Axles
Rate and rounding
Source
80,001 lb and up
any
$0.00 per mile for each 1 lb above 80,000 lba part increment is not charged
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.
Seasonal posting
Programme
Local roads only — the state system is not postedPennsylvania regulates weak roads through YEAR-ROUND posting and bonding, not through a spring thaw season. A posted-and-bonded road is restricted in July as well as in March, so it is a routing question rather than a seasonal one.
Charges exist and no schedule is published. PennDOT publishes no numeric State Police escort rate — "State escort fees vary based on escort personnel status (e.g., overtime) and will be invoiced separately".
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".
Holiday, curfew and night-travel windows are not yet encoded for Pennsylvania. 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.
75 Pa.C.S. §3108 — "Super load" definition — Pennsylvania General Assembly — "gross weight exceeding 201,000 pounds, a total length exceeding 160 feet or a total width exceeding 16 feet" rev. · read
75 Pa.C.S. §4921 — Width of vehicles — Pennsylvania General Assembly — general rule: 8 ft 6 in; amended 2018-06-12, effective 180 days later rev. · read
PennDOT — APRAS FAQ (PDF) — Pennsylvania Department of Transportation — route survey required over 14 ft 6 in high and for every super load rev. · read
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 Pennsylvania require a pilot car?
The first width trigger is over 13'.
What is a superload in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania's published gross-weight superload line is over 201,000 lb. It is not 80,000 lb; that is the federal legal gross limit, not a superload threshold.
Do Pennsylvania'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.