“Special construction equipment” is:

(a) Any vehicle used primarily off the highways for construction purposes and which moves only occasionally over the highways and which because of the length, height, width, or unladen weight may not move over the public highways unladen without the permit specified in Section 35780.

Terms Used In California Vehicle Code 565

  • Highway: is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. See California Vehicle Code 360
  • Road: means any existing vehicle route established before January 1, 1979, with significant evidence of prior regular travel by vehicles subject to registration pursuant to Article 1 (commencing with Section 4000) of Chapter 1 of Division 3. See California Vehicle Code 527
  • trailer: includes a semitrailer when used in conjunction with an auxiliary dolly, if the auxiliary dolly is of a type constructed to replace the function of the drawbar and the front axle or axles of a trailer. See California Vehicle Code 630
  • vehicle: is a device by which any person or property may be propelled, moved, or drawn upon a highway, excepting a device moved exclusively by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or tracks. See California Vehicle Code 670

(b) Any vehicle which is designed and used primarily either for grading of highways, paving of highways, earth moving, and other construction work on highways, or for construction or maintenance work on railroad rights-of-way, and which is not designed or used primarily for the transportation of persons or property and which is only incidentally operated or moved over the highway. It includes, but is not limited to, road and railroad construction and maintenance machinery so designed and used such as portable air compressors, air drills, asphalt spreaders, bituminous mixers, bucket loaders, tracktype tractors, crawler tractors, ditchers, leveling graders, finishing machines, motor graders, paving mixers, road rollers, scarifiers, earth moving scrapers and carryalls, lighting plants, welders, pumps, water wagons, power shovels and draglines, speed swings, skip loaders, weed mowers, self-propelled and tractor-drawn earth moving equipment and machinery, including dump trucks and tractor-dump trailer combinations which either (1) are in excess of 96 inches in width or (2) which, because of their length, height or unladen weight, may not be moved on a public highway without the permit specified in Section 35780 of this code and which are not operated laden except within the boundaries of the job construction site, and other similar types of construction equipment.

(Amended by Stats. 1969, Ch. 90.)