Brazil: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Belo Horizonte has one driving restriction on our books: the Restrição à circulação de veículos de carga na área central e em… (heavy vehicle ban). What is a heavy vehicle ban?
Sources last read on 2026-09-13, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-12.
Belo Horizonte keeps heavy goods vehicles out of its central districts for most of the working day, and keeps articulated ones out altogether.
The test is the vehicle rather than what it emits: a goods vehicle whose capacidade de carga — its rated load capacity — is over 5.5 tonnes, or which is longer than 6.50 m, may neither drive through nor load and unload in the Área Central, which BHTRANS names as the Hipercentro, Savassi, Lourdes, Assembleia/Barro Preto and Hospitalar, nor on Av. Nossa Senhora do Carmo.
There it is barred from 07:00 to 20:00 Monday to Friday and from 07:00 to 15:00 on Saturday. Carretas and caminhões-trator — articulated units and tractor cabs — are barred from that same area at every hour of every day, Sunday included. On the corridors that feed the centre, a closed list of named avenue segments, both classes are barred 07:00–09:00 and 17:00–20:00 on weekdays and 07:00–09:00 on Saturday.
Two one-way stretches of Av. do Contorno, the pair BHTRANS calls the tobogã, are closed to both classes around the clock. Below the threshold nothing applies: a vehicle of at most 5.5 t load capacity and no more than 6.50 m long circulates and loads freely at any hour in every one of these places, and so does any car, van or motorcycle.
There is nothing to pay and no day pass to buy. The only way through for a vehicle that is over the limit is an Autorização Especial para Trânsito de Veículo, which BHTRANS grants in advance and at its own discretion for exceptional cases — indivisible loads, special vehicles — against a stated address and stated hours.