The short version: a South Carolina single-trip permit starts at $30 before bands, overweight and the transaction charge; an escort is first required at over 12' wide; and the load becomes a superload at over 130,000 lb. Everything below carries the South Carolina 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 § 56-5-4030(B): "The total outside width of a vehicle or the load on it may not exceed one hundred two inches exclusive of safety devices approved by the Department of Public Safety." Exclusive. Non-commercial motor homes, travel trailers and truck campers get an extra six inches on one side and four on the other under (C); an exempt vehicle — fire apparatus, road machinery, products of husbandry, timber equipment — may reach 12 ft, and a farm implement 16 ft, in clear weather during daylight only.
Height
13'6"rev. · read § 56-5-4060(A)(1): "No vehicle, unladen or with load, may exceed a height of thirteen feet six inches except that the height of an automobile transporter unit or a heavy truck transporting one or more other heavy trucks in a saddle mount combination may not exceed fourteen feet." THE 14 FT EXCEPTION IS FREE BUT CONDITIONAL: "All applicants shall be issued routing permits at no charge upon providing the department with evidence of its general liability coverage. Routing permits shall remain valid for twelve months from the date of issuance." A permit required at a fee of zero — a distinct thing from a fee we do not know, and not modelled here.
Semitrailer length
53'rev. · read § 56-5-4070(A)(1): "No trailer or semitrailer may be operated in a two unit truck tractor-trailer or truck tractor-semitrailer combination in excess of fifty-three feet, inclusive of the load carried on it."
Overall length
None published
Kingpin to rear axle
41'rev. · read § 56-5-4070(A)(1): "A fifty-three foot long trailer must be equipped with a rear underride guard, and the distance between the kingpin of the vehicle and the center of the rear axle assembly or to the center of the tandem axle assembly if equipped with two axles may be no greater than forty-one feet." A motorsports exception raises it to 46 ft for trailers "used exclusively or primarily to transport vehicles used in connection with motorsports competition events", which the quote does not collect and which is therefore recorded rather than applied.
Front overhang
3'rev. · read § 56-5-4080: "the load upon any vehicle operated alone or the load upon the front vehicle of a combination of vehicles shall not extend more than three feet beyond the foremost part of the vehicle". A permanently attached hydraulic boom and bucket on an electric-line maintenance vehicle is expressly NOT load and may reach 8 ft — see sc-boom-and-bucket-not-load. §L-2(b) caps a PERMITTED front overhang at 3 ft as well: "A maximum of 3 feet front overhang is allowed on all trailers."
Rear overhang
6'rev. · read § 56-5-4080: "the load upon any vehicle operated alone or the load upon the rear vehicle of a combination of vehicles shall not extend more than six feet beyond the rear of the bed or body of such vehicle". THE DATUM IS THE REAR OF THE BED OR BODY, not the rear axle. §L-2(a) caps a PERMITTED rear overhang at 15 ft on a trailer under 48 ft and at 10 ft on a 48 ft or 53 ft trailer.
Gross weight
73,280 lbrev. · read § 56-5-4140(A)(1): "The gross weight of a vehicle or combination of vehicles, operated or moved upon any section of highway, including the interstate highway system, except where the formula in item (4) allows for a higher weight, shall not exceed: (The following weight limits do not include applicable tolerances) ... (g) Combination of vehicles with five or more axles 73,280 lbs." The table is BY AXLE COUNT: 35,000 / 46,000 / 63,500 / 65,000 lb for a single-unit vehicle of two, three, four and five or more axles, and 50,000 / 65,000 / 73,280 lb for a combination of three, four and five or more. Item (4) is the interstate exception to 80,000 lb through South Carolina’s own bridge table, which is held in stateBridgeTable and is NOT the federal one. The ten per cent enforcement tolerance of § 56-5-4160 is an enforcement concept and is deliberately not added here: SCDOT’s permit trigger is the un-toleranced limit.
Single axle
20,000 lbrev. · read THE STATUTORY AXLE LIMIT DEPENDS ON TYRE INFLATION PRESSURE AND SCDOT DOES NOT USE IT THAT WAY. § 56-5-4130(A)(1) sets 16,000 lb on "high-pressure pneumatic, solid rubber or cushion tires" and 20,000 lb on "low-pressure pneumatic tires", and (B) defines a high-pressure tyre as one inflated to 100 psi or more — which describes essentially every modern truck tyre and would cap the axle at 16,000 lb. But § 56-5-4140’s interstate proviso and SCDOT’s own §L-6(a) ("Single axle 20,000 lbs.") both work from 20,000, and that is the figure recorded. The distinction is not resolvable from the published text. A single axle over 20,000 lb is ALSO a superload trigger in its own right, which a gross-weight check on a 95,000 lb load would miss.
Tandem axle
36,000 lbrev. · read § 56-5-4140: "The gross weight imposed upon any highway or section of highway OTHER THAN THE INTERSTATE by two or more consecutive axles in tandem ... spaced not less than forty inches nor more than ninety-six inches apart shall not exceed thirty-six thousand pounds." SOUTH CAROLINA’S NON-INTERSTATE TANDEM IS HIGHER THAN ITS INTERSTATE ONE, which is the reverse of the usual pattern: on the interstate the cap is 35,200 lb INCLUDING all enforcement tolerances, and that figure lives in stateBridgeTable because it is a row of South Carolina’s own bridge table where the federal table reads 34,000.
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 over 12' and width from 12' (exclusive) to 14' and the road is “two lane”
1 certified escort1 in frontAdvisory: §Q: "Width exceeding 12 feet up to and including 14 feet: One front escort is required when traveling on a two-lane highway; the Department reserves the right to require a rear escort where it is deemed necessary for safety purposes." OFF a two-lane highway this band requires no escort at all. "Two-lane highway" IS NOT DEFINED anywhere in the Guidelines — Mississippi defines its equivalent term and South Carolina does not — so a route whose class is not supplied leaves this rule undecided rather than answering "no escort". The discretionary rear escort is not priced.
width over 14' and width from 14' (exclusive) to 16'
2 certified escorts1 in front1 behindAdvisory: §Q: "Width exceeding 14 feet up to and including 16 feet: One front and one rear escort required on all roadways." Road-independent. The same band also carries two route restrictions this quote does not evaluate: such loads "shall travel on four-lane highways", and shall "be the only vehicle on any bridge that is 18 feet wide or less".
rear overhang over 15' and rear overhang from 15' (exclusive) to 25'
1 certified escort1 behindAdvisory: §Q: "All loads with overhang exceeding 15 feet up to 25 feet over the rear of the trailer are required to have a red flag, not less than 18 inches square, at the end of the load AND one rear escort during entire movement over all highways." §L-2(a) caps a permitted rear overhang at 15 ft on a trailer under 48 ft and at 10 ft on a 48 or 53 ft trailer, so this band is only reachable through the §L exception.
1 certified escort1 in frontHeight pole requiredRoute survey / engineering review before issueAdvisory: §Q: "Height 16 feet and greater: One front escort with a height measuring device is required during entire movement on all roadways. A route survey, certified as correct by the applicant, shall also be provided to the permit office prior to permit issuance." INCLUSIVE — exactly 16 ft 0 in triggers it. Related duties at any permitted height: the load "must be at least 3 inches less than any overhead structures on a route granted by the permit", and the transporter must arrange the raising or removal of overhead wires "no less than a minimum of 3 working days prior to the move". That utility work is the carrier’s cost and is unquantified.
2 certified escorts1 in front1 behind1 police escort in front1 police escort behindCannot be reduced to a number: §Q: "Width exceeding 16 feet: One front and one rear civilian escort AND one front and one rear police escort is required on all roadways, (exceptions can be made upon written approval from the Department’s Permit Director)." MANDATORY, not discretionary — four vehicles. THE PERMIT FEE FOR THIS LOAD IS NOT QUOTED, for two reasons. First, 16 ft is South Carolina’s own maximum permitted width (§L-4: "Mobile homes - 16 feet maximum / Non Divisible Loads - 16 feet maximum"), and a wider load is not issued over the counter at all: §F handles it as a "Frame Building or Other Load of Similar Size" through the Resident Maintenance Engineer, with a THIRTY-MILE cap ("The maximum travel distance for a frame building or load in excess of 16 feet is thirty 30 miles"), a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekday window, a per-county RME signature with a five-working-day turnaround, EMS and fire notification in every town on the route, and a bridge rule requiring the load to be 24 inches narrower than the guard rails. Second, § 57-3-130(A) prints excessive-width steps — $35.00 over 16 ft, $40.00 over 18 ft, $45.00 over 20 ft, $50.00 over 22 ft — and NEITHER the statute NOR the Guidelines says whether they replace the $30 single-trip fee or are added to it: $35 or $65 on a 17-ft-wide load. Neither reading has been adopted. The escorting agency may be "local, county, city, Highway Patrol or State Transport Police" and only the State Transport Police rate is published, so a county or municipal escort is unpriced.
1 certified escort1 behindAdvisory: §Q: "Overall length of 125 feet up to and including 150 feet: One rear civilian escort is required on all roadways." THE BOTTOM BOUNDARY IS INCLUSIVE — "of 125 feet up to" — which differs from every width band in the same list, all of which read "exceeding". 125 ft is also the permit ceiling for a non-divisible load, so this band is only reachable through §L’s discretionary exception, which needs drawings, photographs and a requested route submitted at least five days ahead.
$30rev. · read Guidelines §K: "Permit Fees: Single Trip Permit $30.00". A single-trip permit is valid for 7 days — the longest window of the three states added in this phase, against Mississippi’s 3 and Michigan’s 5 — and offers NO return move: "Permit is valid for 7 days to allow for a one-time/one trip move."
Graduated weight bands. The Guidelines reprint § 57-3-130(A) line for line, add no weight-graduated charge to the single-trip permit below 130,000 lb, and reprint the superload impact fee above it without supplying the basis the statute omits.
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.
South Carolina is not in the seasonal-restriction registry, so we hold no posting window for it and are not inventing one.
Superload
7. South Carolina'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
over 130,000 lbrev. · read Guidelines §E-11: "Superload: Any non-divisible load exceeding 130,000 pounds and/or any single axle weight that exceeds 20,000 lbs. will require additional routing analysis. This process may take from 3 to 5 business days." Both boundaries exclusive. THE AXLE TRIGGER IS THE ONE THAT GETS MISSED — a 95,000 lb load on a short wheelbase with one axle at 20,500 lb is a South Carolina superload even though its gross is well under 130,000 — and it is checked by stateBridgeTable, whose single-axle cap is the same 20,000 lb, whenever axle detail is supplied. §L-5 corroborates the weight line from the other side by capping a PERMITTED combination at 130,000 lb on seven axles.
The dimensions at which South Carolina 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
16' or morerev. · read Guidelines §L-3(c): "ALL loads 16 feet in height and above must provide a department approved route survey prior to permit issuance. A front escort vehicle with a height pole shall be required during the entire move." Inclusive. §Q states the same trigger with a different process — see sc-route-survey-self-certified-vs-approved.
Length
Not yet covered
Police escorts
9. Police escorts
South Carolina State Transport Police publishes a rate. One officer costs at least $100 before mileage.
Billable time and billable mileage BOTH include the officer’s commute — "travel time to and from the officer’s residence" and "mileage driven by the officer to and from the officer’s residence and during the entire escort". The officer is assigned after the permit issues, so the commute cannot be computed at quote time and the figure below is a floor rather than a price.
Late cancellation: "a minimum charge of $100.00 per officer" for notice inside 24 hours. A cancellation after officers are dispatched, or a delay of more than two hours from the stated origination time, "shall be deemed a cancellation and a minimum charge of four (4) hours per officer will be charged" — $200.00 per officer.
The escorting agency may be "local, county, city, Highway Patrol or State Transport Police" and only the State Transport Police rate is published. A move escorted by a county or municipal agency is unpriced, and SCDOT expressly contemplates that.
The request must be signed and emailed to State Transport Police 48 hours before the escort, excluding weekends and holidays — a lead time, not a charge, but it constrains when the move can be booked.
Holiday, curfew and night-travel windows are not yet encoded for South Carolina. 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.
A superload impact fee that states a rate and no basis
The fee table states a rate and no basis. Read on the ENTIRE gross vehicle weight, a 180,000 lb load pays $540; read on the EXCESS over 130,000 lb it pays $150. The statute’s OTHER per-poundage fee, § 57-3-130(B)(5), is explicit — "there is an additional megaload impact fee assessed ON THE ENTIRE GROSS VEHICLE WEIGHT on a pounds per mile basis" — so the drafter used the word in one place in the section and omitted it in the other. Reading the superload fee on the entire GVW makes that clarification redundant; reading it on the excess makes the two fees inconsistent in basis. THAT IS AN ARGUMENT, NOT AN ANSWER, and neither reading has been adopted. Two further inputs are unpublished: whether a part increment (130,500 lb is half an increment over) rounds up, down or pro rata, and whether the impact fee STACKS with the engineering-analysis fee, which triggers at the same "Over 130,000 pounds". The Guidelines Rev. 3/2026 reprint both lines verbatim and add nothing.
SOUTH_CAROLINA_SUPERLOAD_IMPACT_FEE_CONFLICT
Four width fee steps, and no published order of operations
§ 57-3-130(A) prints $35 over 16 ft, $40 over 18 ft, $45 over 20 ft, $50 over 22 ft as separate line items in the same table as the $30 single-trip permit, and neither the statute nor SCDOT’s Guidelines says whether a step REPLACES that fee or is ADDED to it — $35 or $65 on a 17-ft-wide load. Every band they could occupy also starts above South Carolina’s own 16 ft permit ceiling, where a load is no longer issued over the counter but goes through the Resident Maintenance Engineer as a frame building, capped at thirty miles with four escorts and per-county sign-off. Neither reading has been adopted and no width step is priced. § 57-3-130(A): "Superload Engineer Analysis Over 130,000 pounds $100.00 / Superload Engineer Analysis Over 200,000 pounds $200.00 / Superload Engineer Analysis Over 300,000 pounds $350.00", plus a "Superload Application (Non-Refundable) $100.00" — the ONLY non-refundable fee in South Carolina, where everything else is returned on denial. All three analysis boundaries are exclusive. WHETHER THE BANDS ARE CUMULATIVE OR EXCLUSIVE IS NOT PUBLISHED: at 350,000 lb the analysis fee is either $350 or $100+$200+$350 = $650. Bands in a fee ladder are normally exclusive and that is the natural reading, but neither document says so, and $300 is not a rounding question. These are SCDOT’s review charges; the independent structural analysis the Guidelines "may require the carrier to provide" above 300,000 lb is the carrier’s own cost and is unquantified. None of this is quoted, because a load over 130,000 lb is a South Carolina superload and the engine prices no superload.
SOUTH_CAROLINA_EXCESSIVE_WIDTH_STEPS
A superseded copy of the Guidelines is still served by scdot.org
A five-year-old copy of the Guidelines is still served at a second scdot.org URL. It is a WARNING RATHER THAN A SUBSTANTIVE CONFLICT: the fee table and the entire escort section were compared line by line against Rev. 3/2026 and are IDENTICAL, so no figure in this file changes either way. But the sections that DID change between the two — permit types, superload tiers and travel times — would be silently wrong for anyone who landed on the older URL, which carries no indication that it has been superseded. Every row in this file is taken from Rev. 3/2026.
FHWA — Pilot/Escort Vehicle Operator (P/EVO) Best Practices Guide — Federal Highway Administration — "As of early 2016, States that require P/EVOs be certified include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Washington." undated document · read
S.C. Code Ann. § 56-5-4070 (South Carolina Legislature — PRIMARY source) — South Carolina Legislature — 53 ft trailer with a 41 ft kingpin-to-rear-axle limit; 40 ft single vehicle; (E) "there is no overall length limit on combination vehicles"; "2016 Act No. 188 (H.4932), SECTION 1" rev. · read
S.C. Code Ann. § 56-5-4140 (South Carolina Legislature — PRIMARY source) — South Carolina Legislature — gross by axle count to 73,280 lb; the interstate provisos at 20,000 / 35,200 / 75,185 lb including all enforcement tolerances; item (4) the bridge formula to 80,000 and the 68,000 lb twin-tandem exception; "2016 Act No. 188 (H.4932), SECTION 3" rev. · read
S.C. Code Ann. § 57-3-130 (South Carolina Legislature — PRIMARY source) — South Carolina Legislature — the whole permit and licence fee table, and (B)(5) the megaload impact fee "assessed on the entire gross vehicle weight on a pounds per mile basis"; "2012 Act No. 110, SECTION 2, eff February 1, 2012" rev. · read
S.C. Code Ann. Section 57-3-130 — Code of Laws, 2011 archived edition — South Carolina Legislature — CITED FOR A DATE AND FOR A NEGATIVE. This edition already contains the whole rates table from "Single Trip $ 30.00" to "Superload Impact Fee for Loads Over 130,000 pounds $ 3.00/1,000 pounds", under a history note reading "HISTORY: 1994 Act No. 497, Part II, Section 85A; 2008 Act No. 353, Section 2, Pt 26B.1, eff July 1, 2008". It contains NO megaload impact fee row, which is what identifies that row and subsection (B)(5) as the 2012 additions. rev. · read
SCDOT — Guidelines for Movement of Oversize/Overweight Vehicles (Rev. 3/2026) — South Carolina Department of Transportation — footer "Rev. 3/2026" on every page; §E permit types and superload tiers; §F payment; §K fees; §L maximum permitted limits; §M insurance and registration; §Q escort requirements rev. · read
SCDPS State Transport Police — Contractor Request for Escort — South Carolina Department of Public Safety, State Transport Police — TERMS FOR ESCORT SERVICE — $50.00 per hour per officer, two-hour minimum, $0.76 per mile effective July 1 2026; CANCELLATIONS/DELAYS; 48-hour booking notice. The form carries no revision date of its own; only the mileage clause is dated. rev. · read
Common questions
Questions
How much is an oversize permit in South Carolina?
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 South Carolina require a pilot car?
The first width trigger is over 12', and it varies by road class — the figure shown is the lowest across classes.
What is a superload in South Carolina?
South Carolina's published gross-weight superload line is over 130,000 lb. It is not 80,000 lb; that is the federal legal gross limit, not a superload threshold.
Do South Carolina's own documents contradict each other?
Yes, in 3 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.