Alongside Houston freeways, Houston police are out in force looking for big rig violators.

"We're looking for trucks that could possibly be overweight,” said HPD assistant chief Vikki King.

And truck enforcement officers find them ... every day pulling trucks off the road and onto scales.

"(Overweight trucks) destroy the city infrastructure,” said King. “They create the potholes that we experience in the streets. They tear up our curbs."

Now a proposed ordinance would require permits for trucks that are not only especially heavy, but also especially large.

The state of Texas already charges truck owners for running oversize and overweight loads. Now the City of Houston wants to do the same thing, setting up a permit system, costing anywhere from $145 a day to more than $2,000 a year.

Permits would be required for trucks more than 102 inches wide, more than 65 feet long and more than 14 feet high

The money would supposedly help pay for damage to city streets that city officials blame on big trucks.

“And it's not a criticism to the industry. But it is a fact that we need to make sure that we have a way to co-exist together and I think that this ordinance does that to a large extent,” said Houston city councilman Adrian Garcia.

But truckers could get permits only for certain kinds of cargo; oversized stuff like pipes that cannot be broken up into smaller loads.

So concrete trucks, for example, would not be eligible for permits. They'll still be stopped and still get weighed.

And still get ticketed even if the new ordinance passes.