Two trucks parked side by side at a chain store's receiving dock can look identical: same body length, same pallet layout, even the same make of refrigeration unit. The difference sits in one line of the registration document, where the maximum laden weight of the first stays at or below five tonnes while the second goes over it. At eight in the morning one of them pulls out towards the city and the other waits, driver included, until ten.
That line is drawn by Annex EK-2 of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Road Freight Transport Directive. For N2 and N3 trucks and for O3 and O4 trailers the table closes the road from 06:00 to 10:00 and again from 16:00 to 22:00, leaving 10:00-16:00 and 22:00-06:00, and even inside those windows the vehicle has to carry a Freight Vehicle Route Use Permit. Add up the daylight share and six hours remain.
The maximum laden weight line. Annex EK-1 of the directive defines the classes by weight alone: N1 is a vehicle whose maximum laden weight does not exceed 3.5 tonnes, N2 runs from 3.5 to 12 tonnes and N3 covers everything above 12. Annex EK-2 then cuts a further slice out of N2, because alongside N1 and O1 vehicles it lists N2 and O3 vehicles whose maximum laden weight does not exceed 5 tonnes as "permitted 24 hours, with permit". The class letter on its own settles nothing; five tonnes is the figure that decides.
| Vehicle class / area | Permitted hours |
|---|---|
| N2, N3, O3, O4 above five tonnes | 10:00-16:00 and 22:00-06:00 |
| N1, O1 and N2, O3 up to five tonnes | 24 hours, with permit |
| Pedestrianised streets, all classes | 00:00-06:00 |
What six hours really mean only becomes visible once the day is written into a calendar. Loading at the depot, city traffic, the queue at the store's goods-in door and the return leg all have to fit inside the 10:00-16:00 window, and a vehicle that reaches the store late in that window cannot set off again after four in the afternoon, even with an empty body. The 22:00-06:00 night band takes over part of the work, though whether it helps depends on the store accepting deliveries at night.
Inside pedestrianised areas the table narrows further. Under Annex EK-3, freight vehicles loading or unloading in pedestrianised zones, streets and lanes, meaning every class from N1 through to O4, are given a single slot from 00:00 to 06:00, and a permit is required there as well. The İBB LOTEM announcement repeats the same regime as it applies on the ground, adding that vehicles of 40 tonnes maximum weight and above may not use the coastal roads it names.
Equipment tare belongs to the same threshold
In a fleet that chooses to stay below five tonnes, the weight of the equipment comes straight out of the payload: every empty kilo in the body is a kilo that never reaches the store. With cold chain equipment that turns into a measurable selection criterion rather than a rule of thumb. Design principle 4.2.6 of specification WHO/PQS/E004/CB04.1 requires the weight of the cold packs in a passive container to be the minimum that still delivers the declared cold life, which makes the mass of the passive cold source a design parameter the standard itself pushes downwards. Asking your supplier for the loaded tare of a passive container and its cooling plates is really a question about which status the vehicle will end up in.
Rebuilding a delivery plan around permitted hours puts the whole producer to store distribution flow back on the table.
When you pick a vehicle for a city route, the place to look before engine power or body volume is the maximum laden weight line on the registration. A vehicle below five tonnes can work at any hour, while one above it has to squeeze the same round into a six-hour daytime window plus the night band; the number of runs a day and the odds of making the store's appointment both separate along that one line.
