Throughout our articles on this blog we have been dissecting several of the typologies into which transport can be divided. On this occasion we are going to stop at the so-called heavy transport. To begin with, let’s see what is meant by heavy transport.

What is heavy transport

The Land Transport Regulations set out exactly what is technically considered a heavy vehicle. A heavy vehicle is one specially conditioned for the transport of merchandise whose maximum authorized weight is greater than 6 tons and whose load capacity exceeds 3.5 tons.

This consideration has numerous legal repercussions, regarding the requirements and the possibilities that this type of vehicle enables. Among them, one of the most characteristic is the use of the tachograph -removing some exceptions- to control the driving time of the vehicles.

Here it is important to make a differentiation, which is the difference between heavy transport and heavy vehicles. It is easy to automatically think that heavy vehicles will always move bulky goods or those weighing many kilos and, conversely, vehicles weighing less than 3.5 tons will move light materials.
Why heavy transport?

Heavy vehicles are also essential for the operation of light merchandise networks such as parcels. It may be that what we see every day on the streets making parcel deliveries and e-commerce are vans, but for the merchandise to have reached them, they have most likely been moved by large-tonnage vehicles.

Going from packages to pallets, we see how heavy vehicles are already taking over last-mile delivery as well. Whether to large commercial surfaces, to companies and even to individuals, the distribution of palletized merchandise -from large to small groupage- has its best ally in this type of transport.
Other types

Sometimes, when talking about heavy transport, they also try to talk about what are considered special transport. That is, merchandise with unusual volumes and dimensions. Among them we find the transport of machinery, large infrastructure, agricultural or especially large vehicles, unconventional lengths (such as the blades of a wind turbine), etc.

This type of transport is very delicate, is usually accompanied by the need for special permits and requires great coordination between the various parties. The consignor, loader, carrier and consignee have to have good communication with each other to solve the greatest difficulties that accompany this type of transit.

We have focused on road transport. However, heavy transport can also make use of other types of transport, such as ships and trains, which can be very suitable for these operations.

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