Most haulage is ordinary freight moving under ordinary weight and dimension rules. But somewhere above a wide excavator or a long steel beam, a job crosses a legal line and becomes the movement of an abnormal indivisible load - and from that moment, a different regime applies: notification duties, route approval, and a national online system called ESDAL standing between the load and the road.
National Highways defines an abnormal load as a vehicle with any of the following:
Cross any one of those thresholds and the movement is abnormal, whatever the cargo. Other measurements can apply for loads going abroad. The first discipline in specialist work is knowing these numbers cold: “it looked like a normal job” is not a category the law recognises, and the measurement that matters is the loaded combination, not the load alone.
If you are responsible for transporting an abnormal load, you must follow the regulations for notifying highway, police and bridge authorities. That is the heart of the regime: before the movement, the authorities with jurisdiction over the route need formal notice. The police need to know, the highway authorities need to know, and the owners of bridges and structures along the route need to know - because a 60-tonne load is a structural question for every bridge it crosses, not just a traffic question.
The Electronic Service Delivery for Abnormal Loads system - ESDAL - exists to make that process manageable, and it serves both sides of the table.
For hauliers, ESDAL lets you:
For police, road and bridge authorities, the same system lets them manage incoming notifications and check route suitability. Access needs nothing more than a PC with an internet connection; each person in the business who will use the system completes an online registration, the system is password-protected so only your company sees its own information, and route information goes only to the relevant authorities.
The abnormal loads regime changes the shape of the job:
Lead time is part of the product. Notification periods mean an abnormal movement cannot be quoted like a same-day pallet. The customer buying the movement is buying the notice periods and route work with it, and the schedule should say so.
Route planning is formal, not advisory. The suitability of the route is checked against structures and constraints through the notification process. A driver “finding a better way” mid-job is not initiative in this regime; it is a breach of the notified movement.
Records carry value. Saved vehicle configurations and routes in ESDAL turn repeat work into faster notifications, and a clean notification history is a commercial asset when tendering for specialist contracts.
The load must be indivisible in fact. The regime exists for loads that cannot reasonably be broken down. Splitting a divisible load across two standard trucks is not just cheaper and simpler; it is what the rules expect you to do instead.
Abnormal loads are the part of the industry where haulage meets civil engineering. The thresholds are precise, the notification duty is real, and ESDAL has turned what used to be a paper chase into a workflow. The operators who thrive in it are the ones who treat the administration as part of the load.