The 10 exclusions, and why each one is out
Open one for the reasoning. Several of these are refusals rather than omissions — a component the published evidence does not cover, named and priced at nothing rather than guessed at — and each of those says what would produce a real number instead.
Your brokerage or service margin
No separate brokerage or service margin is added. Carrier selling margin is already part of the equipment-day model or published market rate; add your own service margin separately if applicable.
A binding rate of any kind
The line haul, pilot cars and accessorials here are a market BAND assembled from published indexes, filed tariffs and operator rate sheets. It is a defensible starting number with a stated basis, not a price anybody has offered you. A rate you enter yourself replaces it, because your negotiated number is real and a band is not.
Utility work beyond any included allowance
Refused rather than estimated, because the published evidence stops there. An operator documents $90,000 of over-height assistance on a 100-mile project and $200,000 on a 1,000-mile move, billed unitemised, and no utility publishes a rate. A refusal that names the next step beats a number we cannot defend. SUPERLOAD LINE HAUL IS NOT ONE OF THESE. Above eleven axles nobody publishes a rate per mile, so the move is costed up instead — a day rate for the equipment and its crew, multiplied by the days the lane takes — and it is shown lowest to highest with the figure in the total between them. It assumes the rig bills a normal year’s work; a busier carrier is a cheaper one. The row says how solid its own number is, out of five, and it is a two, because the days depend on a route the state has not assigned yet.
Detention, layover, escort wait time and cancellation
All four are real, all four are published, and none of them is in the total — the HOURS cannot be predicted. They are disclosed as risk lines instead, with the published rate on each, because four hours at a slow receiver on a 13-axle rig is $2,420 and that belongs on the page rather than in a footnote.
Permits from a second issuing authority
A toll road, a bridge authority or a city can require its own permit inside a state we do price. Where we know of one, that state’s notes name it.
The engineering-analysis fee in twenty-four of the thirty-two encoded jurisdictions
Eight are now priced from their own published schedules, in SIX different architectures — Missouri by trip distance ($425 / $625 / $925), Texas flat ($500, or $100 with no bridges on the route), South Carolina by weight ($100 / $200 / $350), Maryland per structure ($8–$20), Indiana $10 a bridge, Wisconsin $10 per district review, Illinois $40 an hour, and Washington, whose complete published fee list contains none at all. The remaining twenty-four keep the original wide band until their schedules are read, and the widest jurisdiction on your lane governs the line — so a narrow band is never claimed on the strength of the ones we did read.
Cargo insurance beyond the carrier’s own coverage
No cargo-insurance or declared-value charge is in this estimate. A carrier running permitted oversize equipment carries cargo coverage as a condition of doing the work, and on the machinery this tool quotes that coverage is normally well above the $100,000 standard limit a van carrier files — so quoting an excess-value premium on top of it would add a charge most heavy-haul shippers never see. What to do instead costs nothing: ask the carrier for its certificate of insurance and read the cargo limit on it before the load moves. If your piece is worth more than that limit, the gap is real and an excess layer is bought per shipment from the carrier or a third party — but it is their figure against their certificate, not ours against an assumed limit. Carrier liability for DELAY damages is separately capped, commonly at $200 per shipment unless a guaranteed time is bought.
Loading and unloading at either end
Getting the piece onto the trailer and off it again is not a trucking charge, so no figure for it appears anywhere in this estimate — no crane, no rigging crew and no crane road permit. A filed heavy-haul tariff is explicit about whose job it is: Ace Doran ICC tariff ACEH 101-E Item 270 has loading performed by the Shipper and unloading by the Consignee, and where special equipment that is not part of the carrier’s trucking equipment — cranes, hoists or winches — is needed, it “shall be supplied by the Consignor or Consignee” together with the personnel to operate it. Arrange the lift with a crane or rigging company at each end and budget it separately from this number. The weight and dimensions on this estimate are what they will ask you for.
Tolls beyond the crossings this lane cannot avoid
Where the law leaves your load only one way across, that crossing is priced from the authority’s own published schedule and it is in the total. Every other named crossing on the lane is shown with its exact current price and left out, because charging it would mean claiming to know a routing nobody has assigned yet — the state settles that when it issues the permit. The rest of the route carries no toll figure at all, and no average is used: the same bridge runs from nothing to six hundred dollars for one load depending on the class it falls in.
Tarping unless you ask for it
Most oversize machinery, structural steel and vessels ship untarped — tarping an oversize load is frequently impossible and aerodynamically dangerous — and the filed tariff we price it from makes it shipper-requested. Ask for it and it is priced by width and height, up to the 14 ft / 12 ft point where that tariff itself stops quoting.
What the figure itself rests on
A cost ESTIMATE, not a contract rate. Every charge says what it rests on. State permit fees are a PUBLISHED FEE — cited to the statute or fee schedule they came from. Fuel is a PUBLISHED INDEX: the EIA weekly diesel price through a surcharge model whose peg and fuel economy are our assumptions. Line haul, pilot cars and accessorials are a MARKET ESTIMATE — a band from published market data, shown as a range, and never added into a cited subtotal. Where the evidence stops we say so, mark it NO PRICE AVAILABLE and price nothing.