Port gate hours, Texas permits, what it costs to be a Texas carrier on paper, and what puts a truck out of service.
Four things on this page. All four change what a driver does this week. We took out the market size statistics and the freight tonnage charts, because no carrier ever priced a load or filed a form differently because of them.
Miss the ingate and the driver burns a day he does not get paid for.
Container terminal hours are the one piece of port information that changes a dispatch decision. Everything else a port publishes is volume, and volume is not something a five truck carrier can act on.
Port Houston container terminals
| Bayport and Barbours Cut | Mon to Fri, 6:00 am to 7:00 pm | Port Houston |
| Ingate closes | 6:00 pm | Port Houston |
| Saturday and Sunday | Closed | Port Houston |
| Next full closure | Labor Day, Mon 7 Sep 2026 | Port Houston |
The ingate closes a full hour before the terminal does. A driver who arrives at 6:15 pm is not late for the terminal, he is late for the gate, and that is a different problem. Page last updated 20 July 2026 by Port Houston. Confirm before you dispatch.
The rest of the 2026 closures
Full closures on New Year's Day, Good Friday 3 April, Memorial Day 25 May, Labor Day 7 September, Thanksgiving 26 November, and Christmas 25 December. Reduced hours of 6:00 am to 5:00 pm on several other holidays, and 6:00 am to 3:00 pm on 24 December.
If you run to Laredo instead, the same rule applies and the hours are the bridge operator's, not ours. Call us and we will pull the current schedule for the crossing you are booked into.
2026 holiday schedule published on the Port Houston hours and schedules page, retrieved 25 August 2026.
The federal baseline, and the Texas permit you would actually buy.
On the Interstate System the federal limits are 80,000 pounds gross, 20,000 pounds on a single axle, and 34,000 pounds on a tandem. Everything above that is a permit, priced and issued by the state you are standing in.
Texas oversize and overweight
TxDMV issues roughly thirty permit types, including General Single-Trip, Superheavy, 30, 60 and 90 day width or length permits, and company or vehicle specific envelope permits. Which one you need depends on the load, the route, and whether the load is divisible.
Fees are set by permit type and route and are not published as a single table, so we do not print a figure here. Get the quote from the issuing agency, or call us and we will pull it while you are on the phone.
Permit types listed at TxDMV, oversize and overweight permits, retrieved 25 August 2026.
Why the other ten states are not on this page
Most one to ten truck dry van and standard flatbed operations never permit a load. Publishing eleven states of oversize rules made this page longer without making it more useful, so it is gone.
If you run permitted freight, that is a conversation, not a table. We handle the permit on the loads we book, and we will tell you before you accept what the permit is going to cost.
What it costs to be a Texas motor carrier on paper.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| TxDMV motor carrier application, annual | $100 |
| TxDMV application, biennial | $100 |
| Per vehicle, annual | $10 |
| Per vehicle, biennial | $20 |
| Insurance filing, Form E | $100 |
| Application, 90 day registration | $25 |
| Application, 7 day registration | $5 |
| Credit card surcharge | $0.25 plus 2.25% |
| Commercial inspection, maximum station fee | $40.00 |
Fees from the TxDMV Motor Carrier Handbook. Inspection fee cap from Texas DPS cost of inspection. Retrieved 25 August 2026.
Who has to register with TxDMV
A commercial motor vehicle over 26,000 pounds gross, registered, or rated weight; a vehicle carrying placardable hazardous materials; a farm vehicle of 48,000 pounds or more; a vehicle designed to carry more than 15 passengers including the driver; a commercial school bus; or a household goods mover for compensation, regardless of weight.
From the TxDMV Motor Carrier Handbook.
A USDOT number is not operating authority. The USDOT number is an identifier. Texas intrastate operating authority is the TxDMV motor carrier certificate, historically called the TxDOT number. Interstate for hire operation additionally requires an MC number and annual Unified Carrier Registration, and MCS-150 census data has to be updated every two years (TxDMV, how to be a motor carrier).
Two Texas inspection changes worth noting. The non commercial safety inspection ended 1 January 2025, and Bexar County joins the emissions counties on 1 November 2026 (Texas DPS inspection criteria, DPS news and updates). Commercial vehicles were never in the part that went away.
The five violations written most often are a pre trip checklist in disguise.
This is not a statistic about the industry. Every line below is something a driver can walk around the truck and check before he rolls, and four of the five are paperwork or a lamp.
| Rule | What the inspector wrote it for | Times cited | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 393.9 | An inoperable required lamp | 1,136,869 | FMCSA A&I |
| 392.2RG | Registration or plate problem | 695,201 | FMCSA A&I |
| 393.47E | Brakes out of adjustment | 593,654 | FMCSA A&I |
| 396.17C | Operating without a periodic inspection | 586,580 | FMCSA A&I |
| 396.17CPI | No periodic inspection documentation on the vehicle | 379,447 | FMCSA A&I |
Calendar year 2026 to date, all domiciles, MCMIS snapshot 31 July 2026, from FMCSA Analysis and Information, roadside inspection violations. A lamp is a two dollar part and the most cited violation in the country. Two of the five are a piece of paper that should be in the cab.
What we do about it
We track your annual periodic inspection date and your registration expiry, and we tell you before either one lapses. That is two of the five lines above closed off by a calendar rather than by luck.
The lamp and the brake adjustment are yours. Nobody can walk your truck for you. But you will not get written up for a document we were supposed to be watching.
The seasonal risks on these lanes
| Atlantic hurricane season | 1 Jun to 30 Nov | NOAA NHC |
| Eastern Pacific season begins | 15 May | NOAA NHC |
| Gulf lanes exposed | Houston, Beaumont, Louisiana | NOAA NHC |
| Winter risk corridor | I-40, Tijeras Canyon to Texas | NMDOT |
In January 2026 NMDOT named I-40 from Tijeras Canyon to the Texas state line and warned of very difficult to potentially impossible travel. Live conditions at NMRoads.
On aggregate out of service rates. We used to print national driver and vehicle out of service percentages here. We took them out. A national percentage does not tell you your own exposure, and the year columns on the federal report could not be mapped unambiguously enough for us to stand behind the numbers. The violation table above is the version you can act on. The underlying data is at FMCSA out of service rates and the annual CVSA blitz results are at CVSA International Roadcheck.