Flat Beds

ive been getting a little bug , wanting to flatbed , dont know why exactly

 

It's a trade off- LTL is good if you can be in and out both loading and unloading, and if your out of route miles don't kill ya. The majority of our flatbed/stepdeck work is running at die rate. I don't think $2.50/mile plus fuel is a bad rate at all for flatbed work. Stepdecks are running 10-15% above that, neither are bad considering what I sometimes see come across my desk.

Of course it matters where you are hauling into and out of that determines your rate. The brokerage half of our company is accessory to our asset-based side, and we have stuff all over the US, and the discrepancy in the rates is scary sometimes. A lot of the freight I see, I don't even take, because I know I can't get it covered and have someone do a good job for me. I won't take or broker cheap freight unless it is one of our good customers and I have no choice in which case I will try to just find someone that wants to go home and pay for fuel or something.

 

Not to mention we also have an aluminum bed to use them on......

 

I have found that if You are a company driver that fbed pays better, i could not come close to getting what I get now pulling a van, but I also had 16 yearrs experience when hired, I love to figure out how to secure a load, and am a stickler for getting it right, My company does a ton of steel, structural, so sometimes I get loads that are 13' high and all different size beams and shapes, theese are my favorite, some guys refuse them, but I love em, the bigger the better, tarping on the other hand is a pain, we only use full lumber tarps and you all know how theese monsters can be, just yesterday I picked up a live load of lumber in Balt. had to be tarpped, the guy lifted my tarps on top and I climbed up, when I started to un fold em, they were frozen solid, and whoever rolled them up, did it wrong, what a nightmare, I had to actually beat them with a dead blow, to lossen them up, but it is all part of the game and I am use to it, but I can see how some guys will have nothing to do with it, it's in my blood, I have been fbeding since I was 18, and in the summer it is great, city jobsites, boston, manhatten, you cant beat it, in the summer hard hat, tank top, on top of a steel load and the wall street hotties checking you out, ohhhhhh what a feeling!!!! LOL

 

oh heck yes! plus a lot of what everyone else said to but mostly this one lol

 

Who do you work for Joe?

 

Concrete pipe on flatbed and home every night. The bigger the pipe the better. Last week we were haulin 84" thick wall pipe, 39700 lbs each. Too big for our unloader so we used a step deck and backed up to a rock pile and they used a trac hoe to control the speed of the pipe coming off the trailer.
Don't like the little 12 and 15 inch since it gets double stacked and takes longer to unload, all for 5 bucks extra.

 

I've actually talked to guys that wanted to go flatbedding because they didn't want to back up to a dock, or couldn't. Some were worried about pulling a '53 vs. a '48. I rather pull a skateboard, but its personal preferance. I hate tarping, but I like the way it looks when done right. I hate suicide loading heavier coils, but it rides better. Its all about trade offs, each has its own high and low points.

 

I hope to pull flatbed when out of school and if a Latin-Hispanic or anyone else for that matter tries that with me I assure them the FIGHT is on.