best flat bed companies

I leased on with them last May and brought my own trailer and I also believe that there loans are still interest free and that the percentage they will loan you has a lot too do with your past revenue as well as how long you have been with them. or at least that is how I understood it when I was looking to get tires thru there national account.

 

that whole deal was good and bad,most of the drivers that were let go had issues,or were retired and board sucking so bad that the tags were becoming an issue,or they are camped out week in week out.freight was slow,its kinda like deer hunting gotta trim or they all die.
before you go anywhere check their scores,gw sucks,am sucks,landstar is computer logged,malone will hurt you,southern pride is cheap-with huge overhead and freight responsibility.I heard sammons is ok,bennet is ok as long as you specialize with your own equipment.my.02 from a mercer driver...who came from landstar ranger,and runs in the top 10 in rev at both companies.....

 

I've been with Mercer and have a lot of good things to say about them.. Sure they have their share of cheap freight.. Everyone does! I still recomend them..

As for Malone.. I have one word for them... RUN! Run away as fast as you can! When I was in a fender bender in FL. I had to go to court on the ticket I got as a result of the accident.. (long story, but a "witness" came forward 4 hours later saying I hit them, when they hit me). The court dissmissed all charges, when I returned to Malone they said although I had court papers saying I was not guilty, they said they thought the accident could have been prevented and placed a preventable accident on my DAC!

Malone in my opinion is a worthless outfit. They don't care about their drivers, or if you make $$ or not, all they want is for you to say yes and pull their freight, no questions asked.. and just about all of it is cheap too.. (I hope you like to tarp and I hope you like to haul steel coils..)

 

Mercer! I AM NOT LEASED TO THEM. But I am an approved carrier. They call me about every day asking to post my trucks. I have gotten some $7.00 per mile loads out of them and they pay on time and easy. I only pull RGN legal and over size. So far the lowest pay was $2.75 to the truck per mile. They have tried to get me to pull for less, and you could if you want but I dont/cant. If I where you, and I'm not, but if I were, I would get dot numbers and use them as a broker and add alot of others to your customer base like I have. That way when one of my customers start to suck it just means I lose 5% of my monthly rev instead of having all my eggs in one basket. Yes the start up cost is much higher but at a $5 per mile for all miles run, it dont take a lot of time to get back that hard upfront money. If you DONT have the cash to get started this way you could lease to mercer, eat ramam noodles for a year and then start making the money we all should make. This (having allot of customers, and not having to haul cheap freight) helps us all. Some of the guys on this board have trucks running much much less per mile and still gross more at the end of the year but they have higher overhead then I do. Im running 60,000 miles a year (if that) and doing just fine.

I hope this helps someone.

 

You can challenge anything on your DAC. Perhaps you should get a copy of the accident report and subsequent paperwork from the court and send it to DAC.

My experience with Malone was positive. They had cheap freight, but also had good paying loads. It is your decision as to how much you are willing to haul a load. I would not haul a load for under a certain rate. You are not required to haul any load for them. I think that one reason that I did well was because I had a good dispatcher and refused to haul anything that was too cheap. I got many of my loads on my own. I had agents that I would call when I was going to an area where I knew they had good paying freight. Most carriers have cheap freight as well as better paying loads. If I was thinking about leasing to another carrier, I would certainly look at CRST Malone. Their primary freight lanes are in the Midwest and Southeast. If you live in that area you should be able to do fairly well with them.