Thinking About Flat Bed

I'm with Melton, cons: freezing weather, tarpping in freezing weather, pro: physical, sometime challenging

 

That's funny, Fanny the flat bed just told me she is thinking of you. You guys might hit it off.

 

No bumping docks, could be a positive.
I hear they start off with higher pay than van, also.

 

Fighting tarps in the wind an rain. Getting filthy fooling with the tarps. Freezing or burning up tarping. That's the negative.

 

The big positive is your fellow flatbedders aren't a bunch of sissies you have to listen to whining and crying about how their dispatchers offended them or the meat packing plants made them wait 24 hours or how they called the US Marshalls Service when a grocery warehouse worker offended them. You won't have to listen to sobbing and wailing about how the trainer they rode with for 8 months didn't like Rap music when they know for a "fact" only genii listen to Rap music and their trainer is just too far beneath them intellectually for the two of them to ever get along and be on each others Christmas card list. They couldn't even have a scholarly discussion about Kim Kardashian and the trainer didn't understand or show compassion my suffering with Coulrophobia: The fear of Clowns, even though I tried to explain it to him for hours on end every day.

 

Read the rules about posting recruiting on certain sections of the boards

 

Thanks Dog, That was fast. up early this morning. Almost time for me to go to bed.lol

 

If you're looking for pros and cons, you're looking at it wrong. Either it's something you really want to do or you don't. It's WORK. Most people that look into trucking nowadays look because they think trucking must be easy, because all you have to do is sit and hold a steeringwheel, right? They want minimum effort and maximum dollar. Then they realize that even pulling a van, you have to work.

What?!?!? Doorslammers have to work? Absolutely. Ask any driver if they've ever had to struggle with the landing gear. Even dropping and hooking isn't as easy as people on the outside think it is. Work is involved in trucking. It's tougher than it looks. Between that and the mental stress, most people come in unprepared.

A person that wants to flatbed wants to flatbed because of the work. They want the challenge. There isn't any preconceived notion of getting a cushy job just holding the steering wheel. You know before you sign up that you're going to have to work. Groovy.

pros:
1. solo gig. Even the bottom feeders don't force you to run team.
2. The bottom of the barrel mega flatbed carriers are light years better than the bottom end van. When I came back to driving, I took a job with Swift flatbed. It wasn't bad at all. Stayed between Greer,SC, Gary,IN, and Laredo.
3. If you live within that triangle I just mentioned, you can do the OTR thing and be home once a week.
4. Better people around you makes for a more positive experience. The people getting into a skateboard knew from the start that they would have to work. So you don't see them crying about having to live in a box. You don't see flatbed drivers crying about being tired and forced to drive by dispatcher. I remember the first time I went to a steel mill in Gary. It looked like one of those settings for a pickup truck commercial. Rugged people in hard hats. Overhead cranes. Heavy metal. Steel toes, jeans and leather gloves. Manly! Then you see a chic lugging a tarp and throwing it over a coil. Womanly!
5. Pride. I started out in a reefer. I had seen flatbedders, and so after I got kicked out of Albertsons, Food Lion, Publix, BiLo, I decided to try skateboarding. The companies give you a truck and a pallet load of gear. You set your truck up your way. I remember being extremely nervous about having my load fall off the trailer. But after every load, my confidence grew. Your working efficiency increases. Veteran drivers will help you. One day, I walked into the office, and my dispatcher, the owners grandson gave me an oversized load and a permit. 10 ft wide going to Iowa. I was nervousness, because I couldn't see my trailer. I put the banners on and hit the road. I was so proud. Got the load off, headed back east on 80. Got my first ticket EVER when I pulled into the scale with those banners still on.
6. New friends. Flatbedders frequent the same places, and will congregate at certain truckstops and watering holes. You will meet drivers, and see them again in another town. You will see them in passing and yell at them on the CB. You will know the waitresses. You will know the locals. If and when you become an owner OP, everyone will recognize you by your truck.

CONS
1. Pilot truck stops. They will come in and buy a mom and pop joint. There goes the food. There goes the watering hole, there goes the cute waitress replaced by some angry fat girl serving Carl Jrs. The flatbedders will migrate to another spot. Hate em. Everything you hear bad about truckstops come from some driver from a mega carrier that stays at the big chain truckstops that serve slop. You hear drivers say bad things about lot lizards in the parking lots, but don't say a word when the goodbuddies are knocking.

 

I didn't mention tarping did I?

Well, I'm an owner operator. I have 7 tarps on my truck. I had 11, but 4 were stolen. I did the company driver thing where you make peanuts to tarp. But see, I'm one of those people who don't look at today, I look at tomorrow. I knew as a company driver that I would own my own truck and my own tarps. If you can pick it up and put it on a trailer, I can rag it. Completely. Top and bottom. For $250/tarp. Better dig deeper in your pocket, amigo.

Anyway, the thing about tarping isn't the picking the thing up and rolling out on top of the load. The hard part is putting it on in a way to resist the wind tearing off at highway speeds. It's better to learn how to as a company driver when you don't have to pay for the tarps, than when you are the owner OP and you pay for everything.
Its like being a fighter. Everyone wants to be the champ and make the millions every fight. But every great champ has had to work his way up the ladder until he reaches the top of the pile and calls the shots, right?
I can make more money tarping a load than what a lot of drivers will make in a weeks worth of driving, so how can it be a con?