Brazil: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Cuiabá has one driving restriction on our books: the Circulação de veículos de carga na Zona da Área Central (ZAC) e na Zona… (heavy vehicle ban). What is a heavy vehicle ban?
Sources last read on 2026-09-14, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-13.
Cuiabá sorts lorries by gross weight and by which of three areas they are in, and it has done so since 2011. In the Zona da Área Central (ZAC), outside the inner ring, a vehicle of 16 to 24 tonnes gross may drive and load only 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:30 and 20:00–06:00, with Saturdays open from 08:00; anything above 24 tonnes may only move 20:00–06:00.
In the Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM), the inner ring that covers the listed historic centre, a 16-to-24-tonne vehicle is down to 20:00–06:00 and anything above 24 tonnes is banned outright, "em qualquer dia e horário". Handcarts and animal- or motor-drawn carts may work in the ZRM only 20:00–06:00.
On corridors 1, 2 and 3 and in the rest of the urban area, vehicles up to 24 tonnes are free at any hour and the heaviest are confined to 20:00–06:00 on working days and Saturdays from 14:00.
Nine roads and areas are open to everything at every hour, among them the BR-364 stretch, the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and Avenida Miguel Sutil between Rua Barão de Melgaço and the Ponte Nova. ⚠️ Three things about this scheme need saying plainly.
First, the law leaves a hole it never fills: every one of the three area rules jumps from "até 10 (dez) toneladas" to "de 16 (dezesseis) toneladas até 24 (vinte e quatro) toneladas", and a vehicle between 10 and 16 tonnes gross is named nowhere. The numerals are spelled out in words as well as digits in the publisher's own text, so this is the law and not a transcription slip.
Second, the instrument is fifteen years old and its own authority said in August 2024 that it needs updating: the Secretária Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana set up a commission to analyse it and draft an amendment, giving it sixty days. No amendment has been published since — measured, not assumed. Third, nothing here is priced for a circulation breach.
The law sends those to the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro without naming an article or a sum, and the one figure it does print — R$ 50,00 per tonne for loading or unloading out of hours — has been subject to compulsory annual inflation indexation since 2012 and no updated figure has ever been published.