Things to NOT haul in your food grade dry van?

So the consensus is scrap bales of any kind Lol. The ones I hauled were metal and it still smelled like a garbage truck.

 

Used lead acid batteries, once it gets into the wood it's there to stay

 

As a rule, I never hual garbage.
Any baled cans or paper because of the odors. Anything that says "recycling" in the description.
I avoid tires too. It takes awhile before the odor disappears.
I carry a can of cheap Maxwell ground coffee to spread it in a smelly trailer.

I also am hesitant to carry racks and empty pallets because they often stack them up too high and then when unloading they can damage roof.

I really dislike loads that require bracing and gunning nails in the floor.
I once hauled granite countertops and they overdid it. After they unloaded me, I must have seen a hundred of nails and they were long and through the foor.

Mulch can f. Up the floor too. It is often loaded in the open and the loaders will bring all kinds of mud and dirt with it. A wash out is almost a guaranteed must and you have to wait for it to dry. Forget a quick reload after you delivered mulch. Besides, it is not good to wash out wooden floor too often either.

 

i rejected a load few years ago. they wanted to put bulk gypsum inside of dry van... not bagged, just gypsum powder on floor

 

some brokers dont like dry van trailers that used to haul glass for some reason

 

Last year when I was hauling a lot of mulch , they used to load dry vans at this little rinky dinky makeshift dock. Can't tell you how many times the forklift driver would drop a pallet all the way over and spill all over the floor.. Fling all the bags out the back of the trailer then load the next pallet on top of all that... made me glad I was hauling it on a flatbed... atleast until I was along side the road trying to fix a pallet to keep from losing it, then I wished I had a dry van.

 

I've had gypsum powder in mine, just poured on the floor and the trailer tilted at the reciever to dump it out. But the reciever also washed out the trailer for free afterwards.

Had 55 gal drums of motor oil once, and one decided to leak the night before delivery. Blue beacon guys had a fun time washing it out.

Bales of hay. That is a definite no. Had a load from UT to the Tampa Downs horse track. Hay got in the etracking and I was still sweeping it out 6 months later.

Tires will stink up a trailer. So will fish food.

 

Fish food can have a personality, particularly the expensive stuff that’s full of fish oil and fish meal, like salmon or bass feed. Catfish feed is pretty much just pelleted ground corn, soybeans and wheat, pretty innocuous.

 

I've not had any issues with bales of cotton personally.