Post flatbed load photos here V2.0

Yeah we did quite a bit of bridge work at the steel outfit I was with for 13 yrs. Alot of NYC too, they're just as crazy whizzing by you @30 mph as they are @55. Another reason why it's nice to be mostly retired...

 

Yeah I know...we don't have to go very far with them though. Last year, they were loading us 4 wide but we were only going about 2 miles. Some guys were using invisible straps...

 

Any one remember when Werner had a flatbed division?

 

Looks like Swift's tarping skills took a company wide hit when you left.

 

trust me i only had pictures of these because they were my only decent ones. i had some really bad tarp jobs when i worked for them.

i remember a nice square lumber load took me 4 hours to tarp when i first started. because i had no idea what i was doing, and partly because the tarps were so bad and i didnt carry enough bungees.. but every load i tried to learn a better faster way and got good enough that they started making me show the new drivers how to do it, and dispatching me on all the tarp loads... i remember going 3-4 months straight tarping... i asked my dispatcher after trying to tarp in the cold and wind somehwere in frickin nebraska..., can a guy get a break from this nonsense? why do i get all the ####ty work? thats when i realized id become the get it done guy.. which is good with the right company. but bad with a mega, because you get all the #### work and become a litteral slave.. while the guys that ##### and moan and cry everyday, they get all the gravy loads with big miles... that was the beginning of the end. but overall they were good to me.. went from working at the golf course making 1800 bucks a month, to driving for swift and dang near hit 60k my first year...some guys #### on swift but i made good money with them

 

Actually saw pictures of it once. I used to love answering that question about Swift. "Yeah, they actually started out as a flatbed operation". I have some o their documents with the old FLD's that they had in the training manuals with loads on them showing how to secure loads.

They really didn't ever stress tarping when they were training when I went through, it was more important to make sure to keep the load on, rather than make it look pretty. You could pretty much tell who cared about their job, depending on how well they learned to tarp without being instructed how. Securement > Appearance.

 

thats awesome to meet another former swift flatbedder. @FerrissWheel was with swift as well but havent seen him here in along time since he went out on his own.... i tell ya that dang laredo terminal was the bane of my existance! i always tried to stay up far in the northwest to keep them from sending me back to Laredo. what a #### hole

 

Were you O/O with them? Your pics with that vault make me think you were, slave company drivers didn't get that kind of equipment back when I went through there. Maybe Laredo got worse after I left, but the only thing I hated about Laredo was the time between arriving and getting back out, but that's why when the flatbeds arrived, we took over the and made it party central so they would get off their duffs and get us loads out of there.

 

i was company driver with them then went to a smaller company in AZ for about 2 years before leaving there, and go to DSV and become an O/OP .. i was out of the phx terminal and thats where all the nice trucks and trailers were at... i noticed i used to run alot of different freight then the rest of the drivers. probably 70% of my time i was west of i35... id go to laredo to get frame rails to portland, then lumber going to ca or az...did alot of rebar and tbar out of az and a little bit of oversize stuff. but nothing crazy..... seemed like every other flatbed guy was going to laredo to load vans to the midwest and bring back a coil.. repeat over and over and over...that would surely drive a guy crazy.. i remeber getting out east a couple times but it wasnt a normal thing.. i did everything i could to stay out of that laredo yard, after experiencing it 1 time. sitting there for 3 days because there was no empty trailers for me to haul a load of vans... the flatbed dispatchers down there were so disorganized.