A pilot car, or escort vehicle, runs ahead of or behind an oversize load to warn traffic, watch overhead clearances (with a height pole where the load is tall), and in some states to stop traffic at pinch points. States set their own triggers, and the first trigger is usually a width — but many states lower it on a two-lane road, and some classify individual highway segments on a published map so the segment, not the lane count, decides.
Escorts are worth understanding as a cost and not as a detail. On a long lane a single pilot car above roughly seventy-seven cents a mile costs more than the entire state permit total for the move. They are also a feasibility gate before they are a price: an operator who is not certified in the next state cannot take the load at any rate, and certification reciprocity is a directed relationship rather than a mutual one — some states accept nobody at all.
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