What the Heck is up with Prime trying Cans for Flatbeds

I've seen them in chicago also, they had thoes spiffy light weight tractors pulling them.

 

I see boyd hauling them out of croxton in new jersey, they are foldable they seem to be uncomfortable to haul but they only use the new chassi with airbags to haul them

 

Every time I see one, I think of the real estate and weight lost when compared to a regular flatbed trailer. A) you're losing vertical hight of about two feet. The deck of those flatbed cans is crazy thick and then put that on top of a chassis. And B) the weight savings is lost. You got the thick deck and also the bulkhead lift points too. A traditional flatbed weighs about 9,000 lbs, a chassis alone is about 7,000 lbs. No way in heck that flatbed can is going to be under 15,000 lbs empty.

The only advatage to a flatbed can is for overseas shipments. But even then, it'd not be worth it. Just load it into a cargo ship and put it on a traditional flatbed.

 

They are called RAIL DECKS not FLATBED CANS and a lot of outfits are using them along with Prime who have been for awhile now , lot less product damage as the product is handled a lot less once its been loaded on the rail deck

http://primeintermodal.com/flatbed.html

http://raildecks.com/

 

My company and one of our competitors occasionally haul these, they are also called FLAT RACKS, they use them for domestic and international containers. We've done a few for Boyd Bros., the one I did had two steel coils on, loaded shotgun style. IIRC, it's been a couple of years, I scaled in at 77,500 and scaled out at 32,000. They strap, secure and tarp them the same way a regular coil load would be, although there may be a few extra chains. I think the one I did had 6 chains per coil, plus metal blocking the locked into the deck.

 

Prime is running intermodal trailers, loaded with boxed beef from Greeley, Co. to L.A., typical load is 50,000 lbs. These are regular trailers, not containers. We did them for about 3 weeks and stopped because the shipper typically took 4 to 6 hrs to load and wouldn't let us drop/hook.

 

We had a Front End Loader come in on a 40' flat rack once years ago. He didn't even make it to the portal because it was too tall. Needless to say, they had to pay for the cab on the Loader to be replaced and pay for our bar with the stop lights for our portal.

 

BTW, I saw 3 empty 48' flat racks belonging to the BNSF at the UPRR in Denver today. The stickers show a tare weight of 6,000 lbs, with a max. net weight of 50,000 lbs. That combination, means empty they are about 14,000 lbs.