Flatbed vs. Tanker vs. Dry Van vs. Car Carrier vs. Cement Truck vs. Refrigerated vs..

If this was meant for me I haul Crude Oil now but I'm not OTR...I was to chicken to do the OTR thing hahaha I give lots of kudos to those guys cuz I know where my goods come from

 

I backed a flat into many a dock with a flat.... some with a mouse hole...A Flatbed dock is like a slit that the trailer just fits into with almost no clearance on ether side....The fork trucks just drive over and load you level.

The very first one that I ever tried ...I had to back through a gate and into the slot off a busy street.....The worst one there was right against a long wall on your blind side ....You cant swing to the right at all...Just back straight up along the wall and through the mouse hole...After a while it gets easy.....After I drove flats for a while ..I never wanted to do Vans or Reefers again...Pneumatic tanks weren't bad either...

 

Dry van, unless it requires driver unloading. Unloading a 53' trailer sux. I don't care if its full of pillows, it still way too much work.

 

For me it's not that it's too much work....It's the way they treat Van and Reefer drivers....And the crap that they have to put up with.....In my experience they feel you are their whipping boy.....You have ruined their day just because you showed up to pick up or deliver the freight...Ditto for the dispatchers...It's always the drivers fault....

I could see an immediate difference when I switched to Flatbed...The customers seemed to be pleased that I was there with The Truck...I only had One experience EVER..where the customer told me..."We Don't Allow Drivers To Use The Phone"....

My dispatchers were better too...Not just nicer.... but better...My Terminal Manager was great too.....He Asked me...Not Told me ....That he needed my to deliver a load on Saturday....Would I help him out....What could I say ?...Sure....That was One Time the whole first year with him....

They fixed anything I wrote up....with never a growl...gave me all of the equipment that I needed....

 

Reefers are probably better for consistent miles even in an economic slow down...everyone has to eat. If you have flat or dry van, you can face a freight slow down and get low miles. Like posted before, reefers can haul dry goods too

 

Reefers are usually unloaded/loaded by dock workers so you will spend some time getting loaded/unloaded and you're at their mercy. Swift has dry vans and it's a lot of drop n hook....just really depends on company as to how much freight a driver has to touch.