Check Oversize Permit Curfews & Travel Restrictions Fast

The permit is issued, the load is chained and you have a few minutes before the driver rolls. The question that matters right now is simple: when is this load allowed to move? Curfew windows, weekend bans, holiday blackouts and city rush-hour restrictions decide that, and they are rarely on page one.

This guide is for owner-operators and small-fleet dispatchers holding an already-issued oversize or overweight permit PDF. It shows where travel restrictions tend to hide, a keyword method to find them by hand, and a faster way to pull them onto one card for review. For a full page-by-page walkthrough, see how to read an oversize load permit.

JaloPermit, which publishes this guide, is a reading aid for issued permit PDFs. It is not a permit-filing service and it does not plan routes or provide navigation. The issued permit always wins.

MI 01

Why permit PDFs bury curfews

Travel restrictions are usually there in plain text. They are just easy to miss under time pressure:

• Dense legal text. Restrictions often sit in general provisions, footnotes or attachments written in regulatory language, not in a labeled box.
• State-specific formatting. Every state lays out its permit differently, so the spot you checked on last week's permit may not exist on this one.
• Curfew blocks stacked per segment. A permit may list separate time restrictions for individual cities, counties or route segments, one after another.
• Multi-state moves with separate regimes. Each state's permit carries its own hours, holiday list and daylight rules. What applies in one state does not carry over to the next.
• Holiday exclusions that differ. A state's holiday list and travel-ban hours around holidays may not line up with the federal holiday calendar. Read the dates and times on the permit itself.
• Some moves require night travel instead. Certain permits or corridors restrict movement to night hours rather than daylight. Assuming "daylight only" can be just as wrong as missing a curfew.

MI 02

What to look for

Before departure, you want answers to these questions, each tied to the place on the route where it applies:

1. Curfew and travel time windows. Allowed and prohibited hours, including morning and evening peak-hour restrictions.
2. Day-of-week and holiday restrictions. Weekend bans, Friday-afternoon cutoffs, and holiday blackout periods with their start and end times.
3. The city or segment named. Many restrictions apply only within named city limits, counties or route segments, not to the whole trip.
4. Daylight, sunrise/sunset and night rules. Whether movement is daylight-only, night-only, or tied to sunrise and sunset.
5. Escort triggers. Escort or pilot-car requirements can change with time of day or segment. See pilot car escort requirements.
6. Bridge and height limits. Bridge instructions and clearance notes often sit next to travel restrictions in the special provisions.

Here is a generic example of how a curfew clause can read. It is illustrative wording only, not taken from any real permit or customer:

Example only: "No movement within the city limits of [City] between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. or between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. No movement from noon on the day before a listed holiday until sunrise on the day after."

One sentence like that carries a location, two daily windows, a day-of-week rule and a holiday blackout. Missing any part of it can mean parking the load at the wrong time or rolling when you should not. Unfamiliar terms? The OS/OW permit terms glossary explains curfews, travel windows and related vocabulary.

MI 03

The manual method: search the PDF text

If the permit is a text-based PDF, your PDF viewer's find tool (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) is the quickest manual approach. Search each of these terms and read the full sentence around every hit:

• curfew, travel, hours, holiday
• daylight, sunrise, sunset, night
• city limits, plus the names of cities and counties on your route
• weekend, Saturday, Sunday, a.m., p.m.

Write each restriction down next to the segment it applies to. This works, but it is slow and error-prone. States word restrictions differently, a keyword search can miss a clause phrased another way, and it is easy to skip an attachment or a second page of provisions. Scanned permits cannot be searched at all.

MI 04

The faster method: one route card

Drop the issued, text-based permit PDF into the permit decoder on the JaloPermit homepage. It turns the permit into a one-card route summary that can surface curfews, escorts, weigh stations, truck stops and low-bridge alerts for review, so travel restrictions are in one place instead of spread across pages of provisions.

What to do with the card:

• Read the curfew and travel-window alerts first, then check where on the route each one applies.
• Treat dashed or unresolved sections as questions, not clearance. Open the original PDF and read that part directly.
• Use the original PDF link to check wording. The card summarizes; exact times, dates and named places should be confirmed in the permit text.

JaloPermit covers the 48 contiguous states and reads text-based permit PDFs only (not scans or image-only files). Guests get three free decodes a day with no account and no card. Logged-in users get 10 free decodes a day. After those free decodes, each one is $3.50. There is no subscription. If routing software planned the move before the permit was issued, see reading the issued permit after routing software for how to reconcile the two.

MI 05

Cross-check state rules without uploading

Want general state context before or alongside the permit? JaloPermit's free Atlas state field guide, at the oversize permit map, shows legal limits, escort notes and the permit office for each state, with no upload needed. Use it as reference only. Your issued permit's own conditions take priority over general state rules.

MI 06

Limits: the issued permit always wins

• The card is a reading aid. It summarizes what it can read from the PDF. It does not interpret law, approve a move or change any permit condition.
• The issued permit governs. If the card and the permit differ, follow the permit.
• When anything is unclear, call the issuing state DOT or permit office before you move, especially around holidays, city curfews or a route change.
• Supplementary data is incomplete. A missing alert does not mean there is no restriction, and roadside or bridge data does not cover every structure.

Questions about how JaloPermit reads a permit? Email support@jalopermit.org.

MI 07

FAQs