Dry van trucking in Utah

Utah freight in a 53 foot van

Salt Lake City sits where Interstate 15 meets Interstate 80, and that crossing has made the Wasatch Front a distribution hub for the Intermountain West. Fulfillment centers, grocery and retail distribution, outdoor gear makers, and food and supplement manufacturers fill the valley from Ogden down to Provo, and much of their freight loads into dry vans.

St. George, at the southwest corner of the state, is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. New homes, stores and restaurants there are supplied by vans of boxed building products, appliances, furniture, groceries and retail goods, and Interstate 15 is the road all of it arrives on.

Size, weight and port rules in Utah

Utah’s limits are 14 feet of height and 8 feet 6 inches of width. A 53 foot semitrailer is legal, and when the trailer is 53 feet or shorter, the tractor and trailer together have no overall length limit; trailers between 53 and 57 feet fall under a separate rule. Gross weight is 80,000 pounds without a permit, with 20,000 on a single axle, 34,000 on a tandem, 10,500 per wheel and the bridge formula on top.

Every carrier with a truck of 26,001 pounds or more stops at Utah ports of entry, unless reaching the port would add more than 5 percent or 3 miles to the trip or the truck holds a temporary bypass permit. Vans coming up from Las Vegas pass the St. George port on Interstate 15, and trucks on Interstate 80 meet ports at Echo and Wendover.

Utah’s traction rule depends on conditions. When the Department of Transportation, the Highway Patrol or local police decide the road calls for it, vehicles over 12,000 pounds need chains or similar devices on every drive tire, at least one tire of each dual, on designated Class I segments, and on Class II segments every vehicle needs traction devices or four wheel drive.

Where our Utah vans run

Inland Empire to St. George is the Utah lane we run regularly, mostly with our own tractors: about 340 miles, climbing Cajon Pass, crossing the desert to Las Vegas and threading the Virgin River Gorge, arriving next day, or that evening when it loads early. The St. George lane page covers the trip, and St. George to San Francisco gives a Utah shipper a way back west.

Salt Lake City is two days from Southern California with one driver, close to 700 miles on Interstate 15, and we quote it from anywhere in the Los Angeles basin on the Salt Lake City lane. Vans also reach the Wasatch Front from Phoenix and Las Vegas, and loads leave it back to Los Angeles and west to Reno. See Salt Lake City for the metro itself.

Weather on Interstate 15

Interstate 15 is a dependable road most of the year, but winter brings snow and wind to the high stretches between Cedar City and Beaver and along the Wasatch Front, and Class I traction rules can go up with little notice. The Virgin River Gorge, where Interstate 15 cuts across the northwest tip of Arizona, is narrow and winding, a crash there can stop traffic in both directions, and the detours around it are long.

Summer runs the other way. St. George often tops 100 degrees from June into September, and a closed van gets far hotter inside, so freight that softens in heat needs a plan before it loads. Spring and summer are also road work season on Interstate 15, with lane closures that add time near the cities.

Booking a Utah van

Utah clocks run one hour ahead of California’s, so send appointments in Utah time. Give the dispatcher the pallet count, pallet size, weight and delivery hours, and tell us whether a dock and forklift are on site; new construction and retail sites in St. George sometimes have neither, and a 53 foot van needs a dock or a forklift to unload.

Seal the van at pickup and put the seal number on the bill of lading. When our own tractor takes your load, you are talking to the company that dispatches the driver; when a partner carrier does, our dispatcher still answers for it from pickup to the signed receipt. Use the quote form to start.