TA Permit SAFE · German heavy-haul permits for project forwarders

They're still waiting for the permit. You're already loading.

In Germany a heavy-haul permit is welded to one licence plate, and nobody can apply until a carrier is appointed. We hold it instead — and we start while your tender is still open. So the day you win, the permit is already there.

Book a 30-min call → See it in the field
30 minutes In English No obligation
Watch German heavy haulage in action
9+
Years in heavy haulage
3,000+
Permits issued
§ 29 StVO
Registered applicant
DE + EU
Germany · European routes
Where the tender is won

It isn't the freight rate.
It's the date.

When an OOG movement in or out of Germany goes out to tender, three or four forwarders quote within a few percent of each other. What separates the offers is the one line nobody wants to sign: the committed delivery date.

The offer everyone else submits

Permit-dependent

  • ×"Delivery subject to permit approval" — the hedge your client has learned to read as risk
  • ×Permit tied to one licence plate. Truck fails, permit dies, 4 to 6 weeks lost
  • ×Nothing can be applied for until a carrier is appointed and priced
  • ×Port not yet fixed? Then the whole German leg stays hypothetical
  • ×Storage, demurrage and detention run while the file sits with the authority
The offer you submit

Permit-independent

  • ✓A delivery date in writing, without the escape clause
  • ✓Permit held by a registered applicant — the executing carrier is exchangeable
  • ✓Application starts before the carrier is appointed, not after
  • ✓Parallel permits across several ports while the vessel is still being fixed
  • ✓Cargo discharges and rolls — the demurrage clock never starts
Same cargo. Same route. Two entirely different offers.
How it actually works

The permit waits for the transport.
Not the other way round.

Most forwarders have a German subcontractor. Very few have one who holds the permit independent of the truck. That difference is the entire product.

TRANS AURIGA heavy haulage permit desk

Three mechanisms, one outcome

I

Applied for in advance, vehicle-neutral

TRANS AURIGA is entered as applicant under § 29 StVO in the German VEMAGS system. The permit is issued to us — so the application can start weeks before anyone knows which truck will run.

II

Carrier exchanged inside the running procedure

The executing carrier is named within the procedure and can be swapped without restarting it. Same day instead of 4 to 6 weeks, where the axle configuration matches — and we verify that before you commit anything to your client.

III

Full authority handling, in German

Route surveys, bridge load calculations, conditions, escorts, sixteen federal states with sixteen sets of local practice. You receive a finished permit PDF. Nobody on your team ever writes an email to a German Landratsamt.

Behind the scenes

What the German leg
actually looks like.

Real footage from a real escorted movement. No stock library, no PR shoot — an ordinary night on a German B-road.

Play video · with sound
Three situations

Where the German leg
decides the account.

Not hypotheticals. These are the three files that land on a project forwarder's desk and turn a won tender into a loss.

I
Import · DAP / DDP

The box is in Hamburg. Now what?

Your client sells DAP or DDP to a German end customer, and you carry the whole chain including the last 300 km from the port. The vessel berths, customs is clean, and the cargo doesn't move because nobody arranged the heavy-haul permit for the on-carriage. Storage and demurrage run daily. And your client calls you, not the German sub.

How we solve it →
II
Export · EXW / FCA

Your client buys EXW Germany.

From that moment the entire German pre-carriage sits with you — collection at the factory gate, permit, escort, port. Without a partner in Germany who can genuinely carry that, you cannot credibly bid at all. Most forwarders have a sub. The question is whether that sub can hold a permit before a truck exists.

How we solve it →
III
Mid-flight · Carrier failure

The truck cancels two days out.

Six weeks of lead time on the permit. Forty-eight hours before loading, your German carrier finds better utilisation elsewhere and steps off the job. Today that means the date collapses and the penalty clause wakes up. With the permit held by us: different truck, same permit, same day.

How we solve it →
What you are buying

A date you can
put in the offer.

We don't sell permits. We sell the ability to commit.
I

Lead time

The permit is in place before your carrier is. You quote a date because the precondition already exists — not because you are hoping.

II

Exchange

Carrier drops out or is replaced: the substitute runs under the same permit. Same day, no new application, no new fee.

III

Watch

We monitor your routes continuously — roadworks, downgraded bridges, changed conditions. You hear about a risk before it becomes an incident.

IV

Adapt

Dates, dimensions or routing shift: we amend the permit. Its lifespan is the lifespan of your project, not of one loading slot.

From the file

Real movements. Real dates held.

Three anonymised cases from nine years of practice — what happens when the permit already exists before the transport is fixed.

24hours

Trade fair deadline, vehicle down

Two days before the opening in Stuttgart, the vehicle failed and the exhibit was still in northern Germany. A replacement unit was placed on the same procedure within 24 hours. The date held and the stand opened on time.

4ports

FOB without port roulette

A plant builder selling FOB, with the buyer nominating the port only once the vessel was fixed. Permits ran in parallel for Rotterdam, Antwerp, Bremerhaven and Hamburg. The moment the vessel was confirmed, the transport rolled — no loop, no re-application.

0days lost

Carrier swap mid-flight

The regular carrier cancelled three days before loading. A new carrier from the pool was named and exchanged inside the running procedure. The transport ran on the original date, and the client never learned there had been a problem.

The foundation

Registered applicant.
No intermediary.

TRANS AURIGA is entered in the German VEMAGS procedure as an applicant in its own right under § 29 StVO. The permit is issued to us and held by us — not to your carrier, not against a licence plate.

That single legal fact is what makes the carrier exchange possible. When a carrier drops out, the permit stays, and the next one rolls.

9+
Years
heavy haulage
3,000+
Permits
issued
VEMAGS
Direct access
since 2018
§ 29
StVO applicant
in TA's own name
Markus Strotmann
Who runs the permits

Markus Strotmann.
30+ years of heavy haulage.

Before TRANS AURIGA he ran his own heavy haulage operation — Goldhofer, low bed, boiler bridge. He knows dispatch from the inside and the permit authorities from the outside, and he knows which federal state does what in practice.

At TA Permit SAFE he is Head of Oversize Trucking & Handling. When your file gets complicated, he is the one working it.

We don't sell permits. We sell the ability to commit to a date.
Markus Strotmann Head of Oversize Trucking & Handling · TRANS AURIGA GmbH
VEMAGS certified Authority network across Germany 30+ years in the field
Before we talk

The questions forwarders
actually ask.

Our role
What is your legal role towards our carriers?
We are the applicant under § 29 StVO. Not a carrier, not a freight forwarder in the transport chain. Your carrier is named within the running procedure as the executing operator and keeps every classic carrier obligation towards you, unchanged. That means no contractual overlap with your existing CMR or ADSP constructs.
Timing and scope
Should you involve us before or after you win the bid?
Before — that is the entire point. Once the contract is signed you join the same queue as everyone else, and the four to six weeks start from there. If we begin while the tender is still open, the permit matures while the award is still being decided, so the day you win, you can load. It means putting a modest amount into permit work on a job you have not won yet. That is precisely the bet your competitor will not make, and it is why you can put an earlier date into your offer than he can — which is very often what decides the award. What we need from you is what you already know: the cargo, roughly what it weighs, and where it has to go. Axle loads, vehicle configuration and route feasibility are our work, not yours.
Does the carrier exchange always work?
Within the envelope the permit covers, yes — and defining that envelope wide enough is our job at the moment we apply, not something you have to think about. Where a replacement vehicle would fall outside it, you hear that from us before you commit anything to your client. Inside it, the exchange is a same-day matter instead of a new application.
Do you only cover Germany?
Germany is where we hold the applicant status in our own name, and that is deliberately where we are strongest — it is also the leg that breaks most projects. But the movements we handle rarely stop at the border. Benelux and the Northern European corridors, Austria, Poland and Scandinavia we arrange through established partner structures, and the ports we run permits into are as often Rotterdam or Antwerp as Hamburg or Bremerhaven. If your move crosses Germany rather than ending there, bring it anyway.
Liability and compliance
How is liability arranged, particularly for standby costs?
Liability follows a German service contract with individually negotiated terms, backed by professional indemnity insurance covering financial loss within the scope of our service. Concrete liability caps are agreed contractually. Force majeure, short-notice acts of authority and breaches of duty by your carrier are excluded — cleanly delineated in the contract, so there is no argument later.
Are you GDPR compliant?
Yes. We conclude a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR. Driver data required for the permit procedure (name, licence details) is processed for that purpose only, stored in Germany, and not passed to any third party outside the permit chain.
What does it cost?
That depends entirely on whether you have one project or recurring lanes, and on how much of the German leg you want us to carry. We would rather look at your actual shipment than quote a number into the air — bring one live case to the call and you will leave with a realistic figure.
Getting started

Three steps. No sales process.

You are a forwarder. You do not need to be sold to — you need to know whether this holds up on your next German file.

I
Step 1

A 30-minute call

In English, online. You describe what is on your desk, we tell you honestly whether our model changes anything for it. Free, and with no obligation attached.

II
Step 2

One live shipment

Send us a real case — dimensions, weight, destination. We come back with lead time, feasibility and what could be committed to your client. This is where most forwarders decide.

III
Step 3

The German layer

If it fits, we set up the permit layer under your operation — for one project or as a standing arrangement across recurring lanes. Structure and commercials are agreed to your volume.

One question

What is the German leg
costing you in tenders?

Bring one live OOG shipment to a 30-minute call and we will tell you whether the date is committable. If it is not, we will say so.

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30 minutes In English Confidential