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 Two further inputs are unpublished: whether a part increment (130,500 lb is half an increment over) rounds up, down or pro rata, and whether the impact fee STACKS with the engineering-analysis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.
SOUTH_CAROLINA_SUPERSEDED_GUIDELINES
