Step or flat?

Ive pretty much been a die hard stepdeck fan, I sold my flat about10 years ago and went with a step and havent touched a flat since till now.

This winter step deck freight has been so hard to find I hooked up to a friends flat and have been pulling it about a mo and half now, Ive been surprised, decent paying freight and much easier to stay loaded. Im almost ready to get a flat and give it a whirl, Im scared that about the time I do step freight will pick up again this spring.

In all fairness I pull a 53 ft all steel low deck tridem step, with full ramps, deck inserts that I can pull out to drop an an axle down an additional 10 inches and 3 foot pullouts on the top deck etc etc, Its extremely heavy, around 19,200 with chains binders tarps on it, add on my truck which is about 19,000 n change full of fuel. It does what its designed for well, which is move equipment, but when you can only put around 41k on the deck you cant even thing about hauling general freight.

Do I sell it and get a lighter combo step and give up hauling larger tracked equipment or just by a good 48x102 flat and keep rollin?

Interested in hearing what you guys have found works for you?

 

I enjoy moving equipment and doing OS, but the flats been less stress , stays loaded easier and I can scale 50k on it so never have to stress weight either.

I stopped pulling for most of the people I was doing the really heavy stuff for, and OS rates in general at least in the SE have been in the toilet.

Im definately selling the tridem step, just not sure if I should get get a light step or just a flat, its been about 5 mo since I hauled anything that had to have the 3rd axle on the trailer, Im sorry Im not pulling 12 ft OS loads grossing right at 100k for 3 bucks a mile. I put together a cpl partials out of MI to FL last week with the flat @ $3 a mi grossing about 55klbs.

 

Id probably get a DD if i was going to have two trailers

 

I really see some $ in getting a really light flat, gettinga load and still having 2/8k lbs,to throwa partial on with