With millions of freight containers being hauled across North American roads every day, a fraction of truckers will have to contend with moving freight that does not conform to regular freight dimensions – be it the width, volume or weight parameters of that freight. Fleets hauling over-dimensional freight have to ensure they meet the regulations stipulated by each state to avert accidental law-breaking and resulting fines or penalties.
Oversize.io, an over-dimensional load regulation and costs calculation platform, helps fleets gauge the permits needed for hauling such loads when crossing state borders, the routes that can be taken, and the split costs of each of the required permits across the U.S. and Canada.
“Each state has its own authority, its rules, regulations and pricing for all different variables. If you’re going to run cargo from Buffalo, New York, to Denver, Colorado, you will have to adhere and purchase permits from each state or through a service provider like ourselves. This could get very complicated as you’ll have to service a lot of different areas, and have to go through each state’s regulations and pricing, to pay a certain amount of money to access that permission,” said Drew Jahnke, the director of sales at Oversize.
Oversize circumvents the complications that arise from this process, by adding the majority of the rules, regulations and pricing criterion that exist across all the states to its database, helping users instantly calculate the costs incurred with a few clicks.
Jahnke explained the hassles that truckers that deal with these processes manually go through, especially owner-operators and small fleets who incidentally make up over 90 percent of the U.S. trucking market. “A large company usually has an entire permit department that helps the company navigate these regulations. But the smaller guys that don’t have such teams get caught, even if they don’t know the rules – ending up paying large fines,” he said.
This is a problem, because apart from the fines, fleets have to contend with delays in freight movement, potentially losing their reputation in the market and ranking lower in customer satisfaction.
Oversize helps by detailing the permit costs, the need for truck escorts, route surveys, and even police escorts if the cargo being carried is hazardous – all with the details of the overall freight dimensions and the fleet’s available tractor trailers.
“Our customers come in all shapes and sizes. It could be an owner-operator, or small- or medium-sized fleets, or even extremely large fleets. For instance, TMC Transportation and PLS Logistics are some of our bigger clients,” said Jahnke. “What our software does is bring transparency to the market. We’ve received great results and feedback from just about everyone involved.”
Oversize helps brokers save time that is needlessly spent navigating the complex regulatory landscape. From the driver’s end, the company helps foresee problems with load planning to see where it could go wrong. Jahnke mentioned that even if Oversize stops only one mistake on the road from happening, it will help a trucker avoid thousands of dollars in fine and days of potential delay. Providing transparency to brokers helps them provide accurate quotes, reducing the time lost in negotiation and making uninformed decisions.
Concerning Oversize’s challenges in the market, Jahnke explained that it possibly would be the adoption rate. He pointed out that the older generation of truckers who have been driving for several decades are not as keen on learning new technology, and that it is difficult for some of them to adapt. However, younger drivers and those new to trucking are generally tech-savvy and are interested in possibilities such as Oversize.
“We are now improving on our solution to add the ability to order permits through one click, like in a permit ordering system. We basically take all the information that you’ve put into our search and get you a quote. Once you click and order the permits, all the information will instantly transcribe over to our system, and we will automatically input that into the state systems,” said Jahnke. “This can eliminate all the human errors done while transcribing information and save a lot of trouble.”