This job can be quite the mental workout too. We'll get loads that make us step back and ask, "What the hell am I going to do with this?" Some loads are simple and just require a few straps be tossed and tightened. Others you'll have to get up on the loads and feed straps through, up, down, around, and any other way you can think of to get everything secured. This is just as much of a thinking game as is it a physical game.

We tend to have a LOT of pride in the way our load and equipment look too. We want our load to look good going down the road. Nothing makes me madder than picking up a relay that was half ##### tarped because the original driver knew he wouldn't have to deal with it. Tarping is an art and most flatbedders take it serious.

One thing you'll never hear a non-flatbed driver accuse us of is being lazy and not pulling our weight. They know how hard we work. A typical response is, "You can't pay me enough." or "You guys are crazy for wanting to do all that extra work."

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This is my winch bar. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me my winch bar is useless. Without my winch bar, I am useless.

I will never forget having to change trailers in the middle of a load.. my husband suspected that the trailer had issues.. but couldn't find the exact problem.. My hubby had pulled over out near Firebaugh and was crawling over under and around that trailer trying to find what was causing the bad tracking and the popping noise.. DOT pulled over to find out what was up.. They found a crack in an axle.. and in the very top of the underframe(?) that could not be repaired..

So the entire load of pipe had to be unloaded..and reloaded to another trailer... and it all had to go back in the CORRECT order... we didn't have enough 4x4's to stack pipe on.. so we stacked on 4x4's and the curb.. we needed 2 forklifts and only had one.. just me and Guy to completely re-do a load that had taken 5 men to put on the trailer the first time!

But ah the sense of satisfaction when we finally got that last strap secured! Crazy as it may sound.. as hard as that job was I'd LOVE to do it again!

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You know, general "pride" about the job is something that I've been finding a lot in my interviews. Drivers (many of them, anyways) seem to take a lot pride not only in getting the job done, and getting it done safely, but also in the way their rig looks and runs. It's been a very interesting part of my data that I'm not quite sure what to do with yet.

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Dan H.
Sociology Student
Studying the Work Lives of Truck Drivers

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This is why I loved flatbed. Its a challenge.

Wait until you try OD, the game changes a lot then. But its fun.

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I don't have to drive in order to understand the THRILL of tarping and strapping a load well! I think what really gives me a good rush is when some driver tells my hubby that that is one hellova good strappin job.. and my hubby tells them.. "Oh, Thank you. My wife did it!"

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Speaking of load securement and strapping: While I strapping down a load of elevator parts another driver came over and was watching how I put the straps in the winches and he told me that he had never seen strapping done the way I did it.
I put the straps between the rub-rail and the side of the trailer, through the winch all the way, wind up a couple of turns (like stringing a guitar if you ask me) pull the slack through and back through the topside of the winch pull it out and fold up the strap, put the fold between the tension side of the strap and the side of the trailer and winch up tight.
He thought that way took too much work. He put everything outside the rub-rail. the other driver was Hispanic and driving down the road I noticed that every flat that had the straps on the outside, had Hispanic drivers. So I wonder if it's a cultural thing.
I was told that doing it "my way" helps to protect the straps from forklifts and other hazards, and just looking at a seasoned flats, you'll see that a number of rub-rails have been abused to say the least.

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The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so
- Mark Twain

Let's support our new president,
but Obama should remember one thing,
Gray Davis.....

That's my life in a nutshell!!

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Stupidity will get you killed.

I have always done it for the love of doing it, and the workout. I was introduced to flatbedding when I was an expediter. The company had several 26' vans and a few pick-ups and 1 flatbed. It was a 1997 Ferd F-650. It was the slowest thing you ever saw, but man did I love flatbedding. When I left that co., I went back to end dumps. I went to flatbeds again with a regional company and soon found my love for it again. I was dumb enough to quit and went again to dumps. I've been looking for any excuse I can find to go back.

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Stupidity will get you killed.

Maybe they are pulling 96'' trailers loaded with 102'' freight?

I did what ever was convenient when I was pulling a flat. Some loads didn't work out to put the strap inside on a 96'' wide.

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That's true, there still are a lot of 96" flats out there. It was funny that the driver was amazed about my strapping though, and he did have a 102". Kind of like my wife's family with the Christmas ham, they always cut the ham in two before putting it in the oven. I asked my wife why they did that way and she said they always roasted the ham that way. Finally they asked their grandma and she said she did it that way because when she was younger, her parents couldn't afford a large oven.

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The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so
- Mark Twain

Let's support our new president,
but Obama should remember one thing,
Gray Davis.....