Driving in Cuiabá: Heavy vehicle ban

Cuiabá, Brazil · Heavy vehicle ban

Official name Circulação de veículos de carga na Zona da Área Central (ZAC) e na Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM)

Partly in force in Cuiabá right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 05:04 · America/Cuiaba

  • Not in force Zona da Área Central (ZAC), excluding the ZRM — Caminhão TOCO and Caminhão TRUCK, PBT 16 to 24 tonnes
  • Not in force Zona da Área Central (ZAC), excluding the ZRM — Caminhão TOCO and Caminhão TRUCK, PBT 16 to 24 tonnes, Saturday, when Art. 2º II opens the day from 08:00
  • Not in force Zona da Área Central (ZAC), excluding the ZRM — Carretas and anything else above 24 tonnes PBT, which Art. 2º III permits only 20:00–06:00
  • Not in force Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM), including the Zonas de Interesse Histórico 1 and 2 — Caminhão TOCO and Caminhão TRUCK, PBT 16 to 24 tonnes, which Art. 5º II permits only 20:00–06:00
  • In force Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM) — anything above 24 tonnes PBT, prohibited by Art. 5º III "em qualquer dia e horário", with no window and no Sunday or holiday relief
  • Not in force Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM) — carroceiros, that is cart services drawn by hand, by animal or by motor, which Art. 5º IV permits to operate only 20:00–06:00
  • Not in force Corridors 1, 2 and 3, the bairros and the remaining urban areas — vehicles above 24 tonnes PBT, which Art. 6º III permits only 20:00–06:00 on working days. ⚠️ Art. 6º III says "qualquer PBT" while Art. 6º II gives 16-to-24-tonne vehicles any hour in the same places; treating III as the residual rule for the heaviest is our reading of that overlap, not the publisher's wording
  • Not in force Corridors 1, 2 and 3, the bairros and the remaining urban areas — vehicles above 24 tonnes PBT, Saturday, which Art. 6º III opens from 14:00

Lei nº 5.463/2011 never mentions a public holiday. It never mentions Sunday either. The single day-type term in the instrument is "nos dias úteis" in Art. 6º III, which excludes holidays as well as weekends on the ordinary Brazilian reading — so on a public holiday the 20:00–06:00 allowance that article gives the heaviest vehicles on the corridors would not apply, and the restriction would be tighter rather than looser. We hold no official, dated Brazilian holiday calendar, so the verdict above treats every Monday to Friday as a working day. That under-warns on a holiday for corridor traffic above 24 tonnes, which is the one direction in this scheme where the gap is not the safe one. Everywhere else it makes no difference: the ZAC and ZRM rules carry no day qualifier at all and are encoded as running on all seven days.

This schedule encodes eight rules because the law writes one timetable per area per weight band and the areas do not share a clock. The page shows every one of them, because a zone page has no vehicle and no route to narrow by. Read the one that matches your area and your Peso Bruto Total; the rest do not describe you.

The law states the hours in which movement is permitted. Everything above is the complement — the hours in which it is not — so a window here is a closure, not an opening.

⚠️ Nothing between 10 and 16 tonnes gross is encoded, because the law classifies nothing there. Articles 2º, 5º and 6º each run from "até 10 (dez) toneladas" straight to "de 16 (dezesseis) toneladas até 24 (vinte e quatro) toneladas". A vehicle in that gap will match no rule on this page, and that is the instrument's silence rather than ours.

⚠️ The law names no Sunday and no public holiday anywhere, in any article. The only day-type term in the whole text is "nos dias úteis" in Art. 6º III, alongside a separate clause for Saturdays. The ZAC and ZRM timetables carry no day qualifier at all, so they are encoded as running every day, which is the literal reading of an unqualified permission. Art. 6º III is the one place where Sunday is genuinely unaddressed — it names working days and Saturdays and stops — and this schedule encodes no Sunday closure there.

We hold no boundary for any of the three areas, so this record cannot tell you whether a route enters the ZAC, the ZRM, a corridor or none of them — it warns at city level. The law draws only the ZRM, and only as a list of twenty road names; the ZAC is delegated to Cuiabá's land-use law and corridors 1, 2 and 3 are never described at all.

⚠️ Art. 6º II and Art. 6º III overlap on the corridors: II gives 16-to-24-tonne vehicles any hour, III confines vehicles of "qualquer PBT" to 20:00–06:00 on working days and Saturdays from 14:00. Only the heaviest band is encoded under III here. If you are between 16 and 24 tonnes on a corridor, the literal text of III would restrict you and the literal text of II would not.

Every rule here governs loading and unloading as well as driving — each article opens "A circulação de veículos automotores e serviço de carga e descarga de quaisquer mercadorias" — so being parked at the kerb with the tailgate down is inside the same window as being on the move.

An Autorização Especial de Trânsito lifts these windows for the fifteen categories the 2012 decree names, and several of those carry replacement hours of their own rather than a free pass. None of the permit timetables is encoded here, because the permit is a fact about the operator rather than about the zone.

Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.

What applies

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.

Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá, read 2026-09-14
Full citation

Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá — Lei nº 5.463, de 27 de setembro de 2011, "Disciplina a circulação de veículos de carga e operação de carga e descarga no Município de Cuiabá", Articles 2º to 8º, as published in the Gazeta Municipal de Cuiabá, Ano XXI, n. 1078, of 30 September 2011, pages 3 and 4, served as a PDF by the municipality's own official-publication system. Signed by the mayor Francisco Bello Galindo Filho. ⚠️ Unwatchable (D-077): this is a scanned gazette with an OCR text layer and carries no verify_contains. ⚠️ The scan is noisy — the law's own number is mangled in its heading and was recovered from the body text and from two later municipal acts that cite it — but the operative figures are not in doubt, because Brazilian drafting prints every number twice, as a digit and as a word, and "10 (dez)", "16 (dezesseis)" and "24 (vinte e quatro)" agree with each other in all three area articles

Daily charge

There is nothing to pay to drive in. This is a prohibition by weight and hour, not a priced zone: no article of Lei nº 5.463/2011 offers a toll, a day pass or any payable entry that would buy a restricted vehicle into the ZAC or the ZRM during a closed window. The only money the scheme contains is a permit fee, and it is a fee for issuing a document rather than a charge for entering: Art.

24 sets "o valor de R$ 10,20 (Dez Reais e Vinte Centavos) de taxa pública para emissão de cada Autorização Especial de Trânsito – AET", with Art. 22 exempting official vehicles of the União, the States and the Municípios and vehicles performing public-utility services under CONTRAN Resolution nº 268 of 15 February 2008. ⚠️ That R$ 10,20 is the 2011 figure and cannot be quoted as today's.

The sole paragraph of Art. 24 makes indexation compulsory rather than discretionary — "O valor da taxa de AET será reajustado no mês de janeiro de cada ano, pela variação do Índice de Preços ao Consumidor Ampliado (IPCA), dos últimos doze meses medido pelo IBGE" — so the fee has been re-set every January since 2012, and no channel we can reach publishes the resulting table.

We do not compute fifteen years of IPCA ourselves and present the answer as the publisher's. This field is therefore empty because the scheme prices no entry at all, and the one price it does carry is a published base that the law itself declares out of date.

When it operates

There is no single timetable: the law writes one per area per weight band, and it writes them as the hours in which movement is permitted rather than as the hours in which it is barred. Zona da Área Central (ZAC), excluding the ZRM, Art.

2º: up to 10 tonnes gross, loaded or empty, any hour; from 16 to 24 tonnes — the Caminhão TOCO and the Caminhão TRUCK — 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:30, 20:00–06:00, and on Saturdays from 08:00; above 24 tonnes, the Carretas, 20:00–06:00 only. Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM), which by Art.

5º includes the Zonas de Interesse Histórico 1 and 2: up to 10 tonnes, any hour; 16 to 24 tonnes, 20:00–06:00 only; above 24 tonnes, "proibida … em qualquer dia e horário"; and the services of carroceiros, whether human-, animal- or motor-drawn, "somente poderão operar no horário das 20h às 6h". Corridors 1, 2 and 3, the bairros and the remaining urban areas, Art.

6º: up to 10 tonnes, any hour; 16 to 24 tonnes, any hour; and vehicles of any gross weight 20:00–06:00 on working days and on Saturdays from 14:00, subject to legal limits and to the physical condition of the road.

Every rule above governs "a circulação de veículos automotores e serviço de carga e descarga de quaisquer mercadorias", so it closes the loading bay at the same time as it closes the street. ⚠️ Two silences in the text are real and are not smoothed over here. Nothing between 10 and 16 tonnes gross is described in any of the three articles.

And Art. 6º II permits 16-to-24-tonne vehicles on the corridors at any hour while Art. 6º III confines vehicles "com qualquer PBT" to 20:00–06:00 on working days — read literally the two overlap, and the reading that makes III a residual rule for what II does not reach is ours rather than the publisher's.

Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá, read 2026-09-14
Full citation

Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá — Lei nº 5.463, de 27 de setembro de 2011, Art. 2º (ZAC), Art. 5º (ZRM and the ZIH), Art. 6º (corridors 1, 2 and 3, bairros and other urban areas) and Art. 7º (the roads open at every hour), in the Gazeta Municipal de Cuiabá n. 1078 of 30 September 2011, pages 3 and 4. Every window above was read out of this text. The sole paragraph of Art. 2º supplies the definition the bands turn on: "entende-se por PBT — Peso Bruto Total — peso que o conjunto imprime ao pavimento (soma da tara + lotação)". ⚠️ Unwatchable (D-077): scanned gazette PDF

Area covered

Three areas, and the law draws only one of them. The Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM) is created by Art. 3º "para efeito de circulação viária" inside the Zona da Área Central, and Art.

4º walks its perimeter road by road: from the junction of Avenida Manoel José de Arruda with Avenida 8 de Abril, along 8 de Abril to Rua Comandante Costa, right into Comandante Costa to Rua Tenente Coronel Thogo da Silva Pereira, left into that to Rua Marechal Deodoro, right into Marechal Deodoro to Avenida Dom Bosco, left into Dom Bosco to Avenida Felinto Müller, right into Felinto Müller to Rua João Bento, right into João Bento to Avenida Presidente Marques, left into Presidente Marques to Avenida Mato Grosso, right into Mato Grosso to Avenida Tenente Coronel Duarte, left into that to Rua Américo Salgado, right into Américo Salgado to Rua Antônio Batista Belém, right into Batista Belém to Avenida Professor João Gomes Sobrinho, left into that to Avenida Eugênio Gonçalves Pinheiro, right into that to Avenida Fernando Corrêa, right into Fernando Corrêa to Avenida General Vale, left into General Vale to Avenida General Melo, left into General Melo to Rua São Cristóvão, right into São Cristóvão back to Avenida Manoel de Arruda, right to Travessa Tufik Affi, left into it to Praça Luis de Albuquerque, round the edge of the praça back to Avenida Manoel José de Arruda and along it to Avenida 8 de Abril, the starting point.

The same article folds in the federally listed architectural, urban and landscape ensemble and its setting, defined as the Zonas de Interesse Histórico 1 and 2. ⚠️ The other two areas are named and never defined. The Zona da Área Central (ZAC) is the larger area the ZRM sits inside, and the law defines it nowhere — Art.

1º says the whole scheme follows "as diretrizes estabelecidas na Lei de Uso e Ocupação do Solo Urbano", so the ZAC boundary lives in Cuiabá's land-use law and not in this one. Corridors 1, 2 and 3 carry a rule of their own in Art. 6º and are never listed, mapped or described.

So the two rules most drivers will fall under are stated over areas the instrument does not draw. ⚠️ Art.

7º cuts across all of it: circulation is permitted on any day and at any hour, subject only to local signing, in the Zona de Alto Impacto and on the Rodovia Emanuel Pinheiro, the Rodovia Palmiro Paes de Barros between the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and the Santo Antônio de Leverger boundary, the Rodovia Arquiteto Helder Cândia, Avenida Miguel Sutil between Rua Barão de Melgaço and the Ponte Nova, Avenida Sebastião de Oliveira, the Rodovia dos Imigrantes, the BR-364 between the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and the urban perimeter, and Avenida Ciríaco Cândia. ⚠️ And do not build the ZRM ring from the names above without checking each one against a map.

Asked for as substrings inside a box around the city on 14 September 2026, OpenStreetMap returns nothing at all for four of the twenty perimeter names — "Presidente Marques", "João Gomes Sobrinho", "Tufik" and any road spelled "Felinto Müller" — while "Fernando Corrêa" returns 66 ways under four distinct names out to 68.05 km, among them an Avenida Fernando Corrêa da Costa, a Rua Governador Fernando Corrêa da Costa and a plain Rua Fernando Corrêa, and "Mato Grosso" returns 57 ways under nine distinct names out to 73.76 km.

The single way matching "Tenente Coronel Duarte" sits 10.60 to 11.29 km from the city anchor, far outside a central ring. That is why no polygon was traced.

Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá, read 2026-09-14
Full citation

Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá — Lei nº 5.463, de 27 de setembro de 2011, Art. 1º (the land-use law as the source of the zoning), Art. 3º (creation of the ZRM inside the ZAC), Art. 4º (the ZRM perimeter, road by road) and Art. 7º (the roads and areas open at every hour), in the Gazeta Municipal de Cuiabá n. 1078 of 30 September 2011, page 3. ⚠️ Unwatchable (D-077): scanned gazette PDF. ⚠️ Two of the twenty perimeter names are given here in their conventional modern spelling rather than the scan's — the OCR reads "Pclinto Muller" and "Feünto Muller" for the same avenue in two places on one page, and "Ten. Cel. Thogo da Silva Pereira" is expanded to Tenente Coronel. Neither correction changes which road is meant, and both are flagged rather than silently applied

Why there is no map here
The publisher puts out no map of any of the three areas, and this is measured rather than assumed. Lei nº 5.463/2011 describes the Zona de Restrição Máxima in Art. 4º as a sentence walking twenty road names, with no annex, no coordinate, no projection and no drawing; Decreto nº 5.207/2012 adds none; and the municipality's own full-text gazette index, which reads inside its PDFs and reaches to 11 September 2026, returns the terms "Zona de Restrição Máxima" and "ZRM" in no issue later than 8 February 2013, so there is no later instrument carrying an annex either. The Zona da Área Central is delegated to Cuiabá's Lei de Uso e Ocupação do Solo Urbano and never drawn here, and corridors 1, 2 and 3 are never described in any form. Tracing the ZRM ring ourselves from the twenty names was considered and rejected under D-082, and the measurement on 14 September 2026 is the starkest in the corpus so far — starker than Campo Grande's, because there every perimeter name at least existed. Asked for each name as a substring inside a box around Cuiabá, OpenStreetMap returns nothing at all for four of the twenty: "Presidente Marques", "João Gomes Sobrinho", "Tufik" — the law's Travessa Tufik Affi — and any road spelled "Felinto Müller", which the scan itself renders two different ways on one page. Of the sixteen that do resolve, "Fernando Corrêa" returns 66 ways under four distinct names out to 68.05 km, among them an Avenida Fernando Corrêa da Costa, a Rua Governador Fernando Corrêa da Costa, a Rua Governador Fernando Corrêa and a plain Rua Fernando Corrêa; "Mato Grosso" returns 57 ways under nine distinct names out to 73.76 km; "Marechal Deodoro" returns 17 over four names including a Travessa, an Avenida, a Rua and a Rua Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca; "Muller" returns 11 over six names, none of them the avenue the law means; "Dom Bosco" returns 12 over three; and the single way matching "Tenente Coronel Duarte" lies 10.60 to 11.29 km from the city anchor, which is not where a central ring can run. A perimeter closed through the wrong Fernando Corrêa or the wrong Mato Grosso would be a confident map of somewhere else, and with four sides missing outright it could not be closed at all. The record therefore warns at city level and prints the publisher's own twenty road names in the area field so a driver can follow the ring on any map they already trust.
Petrol standard

There is no emission standard to meet. Lei nº 5.463/2011 sorts vehicles by Peso Bruto Total and by the job they are doing, and by nothing else. No Euro class, PROCONVE phase, fuel type, engine or registration year appears anywhere in its twenty-nine articles, nor in the decree that regulates it.

An electric articulated lorry is as barred from the Zona de Restrição Máxima as a diesel one of the same weight.

Air quality is not offered as a motive either: the decree's recitals put the case in terms of pedestrian, public-transport, goods, service and private-traffic flows needing to be reconciled "espacial e temporalmente" in the central region, with safety, flow, environment and logistics named together, and the stated legal basis is the municipal competence over local traffic under Art.

30 I of the federal Constitution and the power to fix maximum tonnage on municipal roads under Art. 4º(d) of the Lei Orgânica do Município.

Diesel standard

Not applicable, for the same reason as the petrol standard: fuel is never mentioned. What Cuiabá tests instead of the engine is gross weight, and the sole paragraph of Art. 2º defines it — Peso Bruto Total is "peso que o conjunto imprime ao pavimento (soma da tara + lotação)", the tare plus the load, which means the test is the laden combination rather than the vehicle's own mass.

The bands are up to 10 tonnes, which the law glosses as "caminhões com dimensões compactas"; 16 to 24 tonnes, glossed as caminhões TOCO and TRUCK; and above 24 tonnes, glossed as Carretas. ⚠️ Nothing between 10 and 16 tonnes is classified at all.

Penalty if you do not comply

No current amount is published, and the emptiness here has two distinct causes rather than one. For driving in a closed window — the offence most drivers will face — Art. 20 I of Lei nº 5.463/2011 says only "Pena: multa de acordo com o Código de Trânsito Brasileiro ou seu sucedâneo, aplicada ao veículo infrator", naming no article of the federal code, no infraction class, no sum and no licence points; Art.

20 III says the same for services that block free circulation, and the sole paragraph of Art. 18 repeats the deferral generally. Under D-053 there is nothing to encode from that: we do not pick a class out of the national fine table and price it ourselves.

This is not the São Paulo, Salvador, Fortaleza, Recife, Manaus or Campinas exception, where the authority itself printed the class, the amount and the points in one sentence. The second cause is different and worth stating precisely, because the law does print a figure: Art.

20 II prices loading or unloading out of hours in a regulated area at "multa de R$ 50,00 (cinquenta reais) por tonelada de Peso Bruto Total (PBT) por veículo", charged to the firm or person receiving the goods rather than to the driver. That figure cannot be quoted as today's.

The sole paragraph of the same article makes the indexation compulsory — "O valor da multa por tonelada de Peso Bruto Total (PBT) será reajustado no mês de janeiro de cada ano, pela variação do Índice de Preços ao Consumidor Ampliado (IPCA), dos últimos doze meses medido pelo IBGE" — so the sum has been re-set every January since 2012 and no channel we can reach publishes the result.

What the law does state without a number is the shape of the consequence, and a driver should know it: Art. 12 lists advertência, multa, apreensão e remoção do veículo and cassação do alvará de licença e funcionamento; Art.

14 §3 triples the fine where the inspection is obstructed and §4 doubles it on each repeat, capped at twenty times the first, with §5 counting a repeat as a second breach of the same provision within a year; Art. 15 makes seizure the answer to resistance or obstruction, with the release charges falling on the offender; Art.

16 allows the trading licence to be revoked after more than five breaches in twelve months; Art. 20 IV makes seizure the administrative measure where the movement risks health, public safety or the environment and no AET is carried; and Art. 19 spreads liability across the owner, the haulier, the business receiving the load and the owner or occupier of the receiving premises.

Appeals go to SMTU's successor within fifteen days under Art. 24 of the regulating decree, with a second-instance appeal to the Conselho de Recursos Fiscais, and an unpaid fine is entered in the municipal Dívida Ativa.

How to comply
  • Work out which of the three areas you are in first, because they carry different rules and the law only draws one of them. The Zona de Restrição Máxima (ZRM) is the inner ring whose perimeter Art. 4º names road by road; the Zona da Área Central (ZAC) is the larger area it sits inside, whose boundary this law does not define and leaves to Cuiabá's land-use law; corridors 1, 2 and 3 and the rest of the urban area are governed by Art. 6º and are never listed anywhere in the instrument. Where the ZRM and the ZAC overlap, the ZRM is the stricter and Art. 2º expressly excludes it from the ZAC rule.
  • If your Peso Bruto Total is 10 tonnes or less you are outside this scheme at every hour in all three areas, loaded or empty. The law calls these "caminhões com dimensões compactas" and states no dimensional test to go with the weight.
  • ⚠️ If your Peso Bruto Total is between 10 and 16 tonnes, this law does not describe you. Articles 2º, 5º and 6º each jump from "até 10 (dez) toneladas" to "de 16 (dezesseis) toneladas até 24 (vinte e quatro) toneladas" and never close the gap, in a text that spells every number out in words as well as digits. Do not read the silence as permission and do not read it as a ban — ask the Secretaria Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana before you rely on either.
  • Caminhão TOCO and Caminhão TRUCK, 16 to 24 tonnes gross. In the ZAC you may move and load 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:30 and 20:00–06:00, and on Saturdays from 08:00 — so the closed windows are 06:00–08:00, 12:00–14:00 and 17:30–20:00. In the ZRM you are down to 20:00–06:00 and nothing else. On corridors 1, 2 and 3 and elsewhere in the urban area Art. 6º II gives you any hour.
  • Carretas and anything else above 24 tonnes gross. In the ZAC you may move only 20:00–06:00. In the ZRM you may not move at all — Art. 5º III bars you "em qualquer dia e horário", with no window and no Sunday relief. On the corridors and in the rest of the urban area Art. 6º III gives you 20:00–06:00 on working days and Saturdays from 14:00.
  • Carroceiros — cart services drawn by hand, by animal or by motor — may operate in the ZRM only between 20:00 and 06:00, by Art. 5º IV.
  • Nine places are open to everything at every hour under Art. 7º, subject only to the local signs: the Zona de Alto Impacto, the Rodovia Emanuel Pinheiro, the Rodovia Palmiro Paes de Barros between the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and the Santo Antônio de Leverger boundary, the Rodovia Arquiteto Helder Cândia, Avenida Miguel Sutil between Rua Barão de Melgaço and the Ponte Nova, Avenida Sebastião de Oliveira, the Rodovia dos Imigrantes, the BR-364 between the Rodovia dos Imigrantes and the urban perimeter, and Avenida Ciríaco Cândia. If you are crossing the city rather than delivering into the centre, this is the list to plan around.
  • For anything the timetables do not allow, you need an Autorização Especial de Trânsito (AET). Art. 8º of the law requires one for circulation and for loading or unloading anywhere in the Macrozona Urbana at hours and in areas the law does not permit, and Decreto Municipal nº 5.207 of 13 July 2012 regulates it. Art. 3º of the decree lists fifteen categories that need one to enter areas the law does not allow: special loads; dangerous goods, except refuelling at the point of use; gardening, watering, maintenance and tree work; broadcast vehicles; construction-site lorries; earth, rubble and skip vehicles; concrete mixers; concrete pumps; lorries with their own off-street parking; market-trader lorries; self-employed hauliers including removals and freight; perishable goods; machinery, equipment and construction materials; construction materials on a purpose-built semi-trailer; and chartered tourist coaches and minibuses.
  • Some of those permits carry their own hours rather than the law's. Removals and freight work in the ZAC, which for this purpose includes the ZRM and the two historic zones, is authorised 08:30–11:30, 14:30–17:00 and 20:00–06:00, and for the whole of Saturday and Sunday, with proof of the address being served and a defined itinerary. Machinery, equipment and construction-materials deliveries to a site are authorised 20:00–06:00 in the ZRM, and 08:00–12:00, 14:00–17:00 and from 08:00 on Saturdays in the other zones and on corridors 1, 2 and 3. Perishable-goods deliveries, own-parking access, broadcast vehicles, market access, tourist coaches and local-consumption dangerous-goods deliveries are authorised for the full period. Concrete and concrete-pump work needs an AET specifically inside the ZRM.
  • Two categories need no AET at all: vehicles performing public-utility services under Art. 3º I to VI of CONTRAN Resolution nº 268/2008, which must still comply with Art. 4º I and II of that resolution. Everything the decree does not name is decided case by case.
  • To get an AET you must first put the lorry on the municipal register. The decree asks for the application, the beneficiary's identity documents or the company's CNPJ with the representative's CPF, both sides of the vehicle's CRLV, a power of attorney where relevant and the articles of association for a company, plus proof of the link to the vehicle if you do not own it, and category-specific evidence — a photograph showing the broadcast rig, proof of the tie to the premises for own-parking access, the service contract for concrete pumping, the market-trader registration, a declaration and a fixed parking point for self-employed hauliers, and delivery evidence for perishable or dangerous goods. The registration lasts as long as the activity needs and at most twelve months. The permit must be displayed inside the cab against the windscreen, facing out, and a second permit for a second condition must be displayed alongside it.
  • ⚠️ Apply to the Secretaria Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana (SEMOB), not to the body the law names. Both the law and the decree assign every function to the Secretaria Municipal de Trânsito e Transportes Urbanos (SMTU), which no longer exists under that name. The authority acting on this law today is SEMOB: its Secretária signed PORTARIA/GAB/SEMOB nº 020/2024 on 21 August 2024 expressly to analyse and propose amendments to Lei nº 5.463/2011, and the municipality's 2023 parking regulation names SEMOB as the competent traffic organ.
  • ⚠️ There is no fine to quote for driving in a closed window. Art. 20 I sends it to the Código de Trânsito Brasileiro without naming an article, a class, a sum or a points figure. The one printed figure in the scheme is R$ 50,00 per tonne of gross weight for loading or unloading out of hours, charged to the business receiving the goods — and that is the 2011 base, which the law itself orders re-indexed to IPCA every January, with no updated table published. Seizure, a tripled fine for obstructing an inspection, doubling on each repeat and revocation of the trading licence after five breaches in a year are all in the text without numbers attached.
  • ⚠️ Treat this rule as in force but under review. Art. 29 brought the law into effect on the day it was published, 30 September 2011, and Art. 27 gave hauliers established in Cuiabá two years to adapt, which expired on 30 September 2013. In August 2024 the Secretária Municipal de Mobilidade Urbana set up a four-member commission "CONSIDERANDO a necessidade de atualização da Lei nº 5.463 de 27 de setembro de 2011", to report and to draft an amendment within sixty days. As of 14 September 2026 nothing amending or replacing it has appeared in the municipal gazette — measured against a working control, not assumed — but the authority has said in its own words that it wants the law changed.
Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá, read 2026-09-14
Full citation

Prefeitura Municipal de Cuiabá — Lei nº 5.463, de 27 de setembro de 2011, Articles 1º to 29, in the Gazeta Municipal de Cuiabá n. 1078 of 30 September 2011, pages 3 and 4, for the areas, the weight bands, the timetables, the Art. 7º open roads, the AET requirement, the penalties and the commencement and adaptation dates; and Decreto Municipal nº 5.207, de 13 de julho de 2012, which regulates the AET, in the Gazeta Municipal de Cuiabá n. 1132 of 17 July 2012, pages 5 to 7, for the fifteen permit categories, the category-specific hours, the CONTRAN exemption, the registration documents, the twelve-month registration limit, the display rules and the appeal route. SEMOB's succession to SMTU comes from PORTARIA/GAB/SEMOB nº 020/2024 in the gazette of 22 August 2024. ⚠️ Unwatchable (D-077): all three are scanned or image-set gazette PDFs

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-13.

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