flatbed vs. dry van

Sorry long post alert. I am all over the place with this one so have fun figuring it out.

Trucking sucks..... It’s unforgettable, it’s mean. It’s a lot of hours. 50-100 hours a week. It consumes you. I jumped in at the best time. Made 5-10k a week. The close to $10k weeks were 4am till 10pm just about. For what I asked myself.

Public hates truckers. Cops love handing out fines. Regulations are so bad that you will go nuts figuring them all out. Flatbed is probably the worst cause of overhang options.

I spent 18 years driving. All local mostly company guy. There is money to be made. Not easy money. Flatbed will cut you up, bruise you all over. Hope you like getting dirty also. Pissing on the side of the road and showering whenever.

You say you will go to where the rates are. Remember you are now living in a box. That lifestyle not one I did but I couldn’t imagine 2 weeks at a time in a sleeper. How long will it take you to get to said lane? How long will you stay in said money area? How long to you get back home? Then park the equipment for 26 weeks.

Why not just work part time for a local guy? I am certainly not smart. I assume keep building what you have in real estate. Most likely a better payoff since your near retirement age and that holds better value then a 500k mile international truck.

I count my blessings that as of July 8, I pray I never have to touch a truck again. Finally a way out union job at the gas company. All experiences differ. Most do this work cause it’s all we know/all we can do. Better then McDonald’s but not DR money.

 

Well bumblebee summed it up pretty good.

I was gonna post the other night, Ive said it before and I'll say it again. Op doesn't know what he doesn't know. Driving the truck is the easiest part, is everything else that can't really be taught except through experiencing it all 1st hand.

I cant think of one other industry that could give a person any experience in trucking, except trucking. From day one I learned that every person that deals with trucking thinks you're supposed to automatically know everything. 1st time at shipper and dont know where to park or check in? Tough ####, you should already know lol.

If the op is determined to run his own truck, I say the op buy it & a trailer and leases on to a reputable company. It'll be a steep learning curve. The burden of the business side of trucking, the rules, regs, compliance paperwork, billing, etc is enough to ruin most people. But maybe without having to deal with that side of it, will give him a slightly better chance at success.

As Im typing this Im sitting here watching couple knuckleheads tarp/bungee my load (shippers policy, driver isnt allowed out of the truck) which Im gonna have to pull out to the staging area and spend 30min redoing.

 

@HillbillyDeluxeTruck i agree that leading to a rewritable carrier would be best, however he doesn't qualify for any of them because he has no experience.

 

Flatbed isn't really hard as much as it is sucky. It's easy, but tarping in high humidity sucks, (not much of an issue if you are from FL and are used to it) cold isn't so bad, you just need to hustle a bit to stay warm. If it's cold outside just get on it hard so you will stay warm, and it's won't take as long either.

People from the states with high humidity have a hard time in the dry arid states, they don't sweat enough. Just get your shirt wet. It will evaporate and keep you cool.

 

Me too. I'm from UT. Humidity is the hardest part.

I remember picking up a load in Savanna, GA during winter. It was like 65 degrees. T-shirt weather for some of us. . The workers were all decked out o\in full piece cardhart overalls and huddling together in the shipping office next to the heater. I wanted to laugh but I remember how I had to go change out of my wet underwear when I was there loading in the summer.

 

With companies like TMC and Cypress being training companies, I wonder if they'd lease on someone with a truck that doesnt have any experience.

Edit: Cypress doesnt seem to do lease operators.

 

Tmc might. would be worth looking into. But they would make him go through there driver training program and i just don't see him being willing to run with a trainer for two months at 350/week pay or whatever they start students at. And he wouldn't learn anything about the business. They would teach him to drive and tarp. That's the easy part any monkey can do. Learning to milk the good freight lanes for every penny is the hard part and that wont happen when the dispatch system is "we got these 3 loads, which one you want?"