Tanker Flatbed Refrigerated

Watching. I'm trying to get into flatbed now, I want the challenge. Dry van seems a bit boring, all doors will look the same after a while. Tanker is interesting but lots of hazmat. Refer, depending on what you haul has its challenges. My buddy is at a chicken plant all the time in TX, its nasty he says.

 

Well ill probably never haul anything but tanker again. To me it's the easiest best money out there and I can't figure out why more drivers don't do it.

Tanker is different of course, generally speaking we don't do a lot of drop and hook. So you live load and unload. Its not uncommon for a pre-loaded trailer but unloading is almost always live.

You have to learn to unload, air off, pump off and gravity. Some people struggle with that. There is generally more hazmat but I can't figure out why anyone would care about that it all pulls the same.

Now many people will list surge as a reason to not pull tanks and to that I say "Good God it's not that bad!" Surge is surge, no it won't push you through the intersection, it won't wreck you, it won't come up into the cab with you and molest you. It's just a part of the job. But don't worry you're about to hear a lot of surge stories.

 

Go with tanker for the best money and very little work, unless you consider hooking up hoses to be work.

Dry van is easy; at least the little I did was.
Here's a few dry van for new cdl grads:
USA Truck
Carolina Logistics
Nick Strimbu Inc.
Transport America
Halvor Lines
Sunset Logistics (www.sunsetus.com)
Watkins-Shepard
H.O. Wolding
Western Express
Old Dominion
Safer Transportation
Super Service
Cargo Transporters
Paschall Truck Lines
Dartco Inc.
Milan Express

 

I pulled livestock, a tough job with very real dangers unlike any other trucking job! I pulled flats and it wasn't all that labor intensive (aside from dragging a rain or ice soaked tarp), tarps suck so it's not my cup of tea! I pulled an 8 axle set up (55ton RGN) for yrs, loved this work but IT IS LABORSOME! probably more-so than most other areas of trucking. THEN I found Tanks....fuel tanks to be precise and will kick myself for yrs to come for not making the change yrs ago, although I'm still very green to fuel hauling I love it, not too hard, a little mental challenging, a little math....oh and with an 8500 gallon fuel tanker nearly NO surge or slosh at all, honestly I rarely feel it move at all! Hope this helps...JM2C

 

I'll tell you from experience of pulling a reefer, enjoy sitting at grocery warehouses for hours on end while the lazy ### lumpers take their sweet time. Ofcourse the company i was with i kept the same trailer, so no drop n hooks

 

Yep, if I had it to do all over I would have started in tanks and stayed.

 

I make quite a bit more money hauling cars than I did when I was pulling dry vans but, looking back on it, I should have become a tanker yanker instead. If I were hauling gasoline, I could be making the same money as I do hauling cars (if not more) except I would be sleeping in my own house every night, doing only half the labor (parking lots aren't quite as labor-intensive as skateboards, but you will work), and there doesn't seem to be quite as much buck-passing and blame-shifting (you really, really, have to CYA when hauling POV's or new cars because the driver will eventually be blamed for EVERYTHING).

 

Van: cut and dry, it's about as basic as driving an 18 wheeler can get. The biggest downside to van is the slow season from mid December to late March. There's a lot of sitting at truck stops, and a lot of short haul.

Refer: the biggest pro to OTR refer, if it is a pro to you, is that it generally sees the most long haul. This is because many of the items you pick up, are made only in one place in the whole country, aND need to be delivered everywhere. So if you want your average length of haul to be 1200+ miles, refer is the way to go. The biggest con to refer are lumpers (something you'll see too much of even with dry van but double it now with refer). Lumpers believe that everything in your truck needs to be repalletized, AND put on shelves before you ever get your bills signed and are dismissed. This has taken upwards of 8 to 9 hours, and the average is around 4 hours. They do this so that they can report every single piece of damaged freight and charge it back to the shipper (whether they are actually the ones who damaged it or not many times). Lumpers are not people I've enjoyed meeting for the most part.

Flatbed: I've little experience, and have done it twice (I'm on my second round still). It takes time to learn, and it takes time to secure a load. On average tho, I'm at about par as to how much time I spend at a shipper as I was with Van. This is because the actual loading of a flatbed goes quick, the other 1 1/2 hours spent at the shipper is on you, for securing (plus tarping ) the load. I think the time will be reduced to 1 hour after I have more experience , which is faster than the average time it takes to load a dry van. Delivery however, is the fastest, on average, of the three I've mentioned, because removing securement is fairly quick, and just like loading, removing the load is also really fast for the reciever. I usually have less than 45 minutes of total time at a receiver. Flatbed doesn't pay better for me on a lease purchase program, but maybe as a company driver it would. I'm doing twice the work for half the pay right now at CRST Malone.

Tanker: never hauled it, but it pays the best. Back before they built the refineries in North Dakota to refine the oil in that state, they were paying drivers who relocated 80k a year as company drivers, I wonder what all those guys are doing now tho, as they've built refineries up north now and there's no need to haul that oil to Texas lol. That's why you're not paying as much for fuel now too.


No matter which one you choose, you are going to continually see a rise in the cost to operate, and a decline in miles if regs don't change. The way things look for now, it's a dead end job, and the sad thing about that is, without it, every job is a dead end job. Just do your best to conserve on the road, and get your tax deductions right, because you will be spending at least 20% of your income on your job, and probably closer to 50% worth of legal deductions (regardless if you would buy those things even if you didn't drive trucks). Good luck.