2025 Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference Breakbulk & Project Cargo
Road to nowhere
Outdated infrastructure, permitting processes challenge inland US heavy hauls
By Carly Fields
The movement of heavy and oversized cargo across North America presents a unique set of hurdles, and logistics professionals say they are frustrated by the increasing inadequacy of existing infrastructure to cope with the demands of modern project cargo.
Speaking at the Journal of Commerce’ s 2025 Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference( Breakbulk25) in late April, experts laid bare the complex realities facing the inland logistics sector, from crumbling infrastructure to a patchwork of permitting regulations that can stall even the most meticulously planned moves.
Benjamin Liewald, COO and head of North America Projects for Fracht Group, said that 37 % of the more than 650,000 bridges in the US require“ significant repair or replacement.”
“ That’ s about 220,000 bridges,” which directly impacts how and where massive components can be transported throughout the country, he said.
Further, existing road infrastructure was“ never built to haul some of the components that we’ re hauling today; they keep getting bigger,” added Cesar Oswaldo Rondon, supply chain manager at engineering and construction firm Kiewit.
“ To go long distances with really heavy cargo is a major challenge.”
“ To go long distances with really heavy cargo is a major challenge,” Liewald said.“ From our side, we have increased our rail fleet to over 52 rail cars, mainly because of that reason. We’ re also doing a lot more by barges than ever before, but you can only go so far.”
State-by-state system
A patchwork system of permitting regulations that forces haulers to deal with each state on an individual basis— rather than a unified federal system— creates additional bottlenecks and uncertainty.
“ It’ s amazing that in the year we’ re in, the threshold in America in general regarding permits is not standardized,” Rondon said.“ You go from state to state. And each state
has a different mentality, different infrastructure, different geographical situations.”
In Texas, it takes between 10 and 20 days to obtain the necessary permits to transport a super load, double the time it took just a few months ago, he said. In Louisiana, the same process takes six to eight weeks.
“ Why? Nobody knows,” Rondon told the Breakbulk25 audience.
Sandra Guadarrama, senior project logistics manager at Linde Engineering Americas, said the situation is improving, but she recalled an instance in which it took six months to get a heavy-haul permit in California.
Rondon said these transportation realities often clash with a desire to move project cargo efficiently, requiring components that would otherwise be transported fully assembled to be moved in pieces.
“ The engineers do not want to split,” he said.“ They want to send us as assembled as possible.”
That’ s forced heavy cargo haulers to explore some unconventional solutions. For example, when Fracht was tasked with delivering two large reactors to a project site in Manitoba, Canada, the company was unable to secure permits to cross a particular span bridge, Liewald said.
“ There was no way to permit over that bridge with these 250-ton pieces,” he said.“ We tried every kind of trailer configuration known to man, and there was just no way.”
Instead, Fracht filled the frozen riverbed next to the bridge with limestone and compacted it to build a road over the riverbed.
10 Journal of Commerce | June 2025 www. joc. com