Every time I see a fully customized truck or condo its pulling a reefer or flatbed

I may be wrong, but every time I see a truck that is fully decked out its either pulling a reefer, flatbed, or its a moving company like Allied or Mayweather. If they are not fully custom its a new truck that is the size of a bus. I assume that is where the money is? I want to be dry van but noticed the old rusty trucks covered with black smoke are the ones pulling the dry van. I don't think I've ever seen a nice truck pulling a dry van. Is this true?

 

Everyone's business is different and so is everyone's tastes. If you are very successful and want to spend your money on a real showy Truck and trailer more power to you. You earned it. I rather work less and keep more in my pocket. What if I had 5 regular trucks all earning me money? I would go ahead and buy something very nice for myself.

Everyone's financial situation is different.

 

Express-1 has a lot of 2015 and 2016 Volvos with the big house sleepers - 160" or something like that maybe 144", I dunno. They pull dry vans. Really nice late model equipment. It's time critical expedited freight. You would have to be a husband/wife team to get into jobs where they have trucks like that. People in those kind of trucks typically stay on the road for months on end. In expediting the wait times between reloads can be a day or more. Although with a tractor trailer it really shouldn't be at the right company. However with that big heavy tractor it will really limit what loads you can accept. Forget anything over 40,000 lbs and probably 35,000 lbs. Spare me the argument you don't like heavy loads, sometimes they do in fact pay awesome rates and I sure wouldn't want to be limited to light loads. It's a very limited segment and the companies paying for trucks like that aren't working for peanuts.

 

Yeah I am just making sure there is money to be made with dry van since I only see old Freightliner Columbias pulling dry van and $250,000 trucks pulling everything else. I personally wouldn't want a big truck either. I pull reefer as a company driver and recently saw a custom truck in a dock door and he had the really long catwalk so he had to drop his trailer and move out of the way for another driver to back in since the place was so tight.

 

Dry van is the most competitive freight and rates largely reflect that. You're right there are a lot of junkers pulling vans. Every once in a while you'll see a really nice clean tractor pulling one.

 

I am willing to take a little less for dry van since there is way less hassle. My reefer trailer always has to be full of fuel and the inside has to be spotless clean and smelling nice and thats a challenge when you are out in the middle of nowhere or in an old major city. The rare times I had a dry load it was so easy. I just pull up to the open door, get loaded within 30 minutes, and have plenty of time to deliver. Also the place is as quiet as a park. Reefer warehouses have 1000 dropped reefer trailers going full blast you can't even hear yourself think and they delay you for two days. Then they may reject a pallet since the food date expired and you have to deal with it.

 

Yeah reefer guys usually do a good job screwing up rates on dry freight.

 

I met a couple in one of those. Had dinner with them. They were running team. No house or kids. They traveled a lot with the money they made. Their plan was to buy land and a home and retire. Everyone's different out here.

 

There's a few spots in PA (717), WI and IL where I only see nice rigs load out of. They mostly do reefer LTL and some of their trailers are equipped with multi temp control and pallet jack. Gorgeous and costly equipment. I guess they have the decent paying freight that "never hit the boards."