Tolls outside the freight: why every price says "plus tolls"
The vale-pedágio is not freight. What that changes in a quote, how to compare prices with and without tolls, and what forgetting the plazas of a lane costs.
By The CargoIA team3 min read
In CargoIA, every freight price comes with "plus tolls" next to it. That is how Brazilian law treats tolls, and writing it on every price prevents an expensive mistake when comparing and charging.
The vale-pedágio is not freight
Lei 10.209/2001 created the mandatory vale-pedágio. A truck's tolls are the shipper's responsibility, paid in advance to the carrier separately from the freight, and the value of the vale-pedágio is not part of the freight. ANTT's minimum rate also leaves tolls out and adds them afterwards.
Two practical consequences follow:
- Tolls take no margin and no ICMS. They pass through at their own value.
- Two prices per tonne can only be compared if they treat tolls the same way.
Price with tolls and price plus tolls
An example. On a lane, a 7-axle bitrem goes through 6 plazas that charge R$12.00 per axle. Per trip, that is 6 × 7 × R$12.00 = R$504.00 in tolls. Divided by the bitrem's 37 tonnes, it comes to R$13.62 per tonne.
Now, two offers for the same lane:
- R$175.00 per tonne, plus tolls;
- R$180.00 per tonne, tolls included.
The second looks more expensive. Without the tolls, it is R$166.38 per tonne, plus tolls, R$8.62 cheaper than the first. When a market listing doesn't say "plus tolls", CargoIA does this calculation before comparing and takes the bitrem's tolls on the lane, per tonne, out of the price.
What forgetting costs
The opposite mistake is to quote the company without the tolls, assuming they were already in the price. On the same lane, with 3,000 tonnes a month (about 81 bitrem trips), the tolls add up to about R$40,900 a month. If the company doesn't pay them, that money comes out of your margin. With a 10% margin on a driver freight of R$150.00 per tonne, the margin is R$15.00, and the example's tolls, R$13.62, take almost all of it.
The toll register
To price the tolls of a route, CargoIA keeps a national register, built from the regulators' acts and the concessionaires' tables, with the source of every tariff. On 13 November 2026 it held 584 active charging points (470 plazas, 109 free-flow gantries and 5 municipal fees), plus the metropolitan free flow of the Via Dutra, a closed system that charges by the kilometres between the entry gantry and the exit.
A few rules go into the toll calculation:
- Many concessions charge a truck the base tariff once per axle, and a plaza that publishes a table of its own is priced by it.
- An empty truck with axles lifted pays only for the axles on the ground (Lei 13.103/2015, art. 17).
- Some plazas charge a different amount at weekends, and the Dutra's free flow changes its factor by the hour. If you enter a departure time, the quote uses the moment of passage.
- A tariff announced for a date starts applying on its own that day, so a quote made today uses today's tariff.
- A plaza with no published tariff shows in the list with the reason and stays out of the total instead of counting as free.
See the plans and check every plaza of your route in a quote.