Whats the difference?

Fueling when reefer is half tank. You can expect anything from frozen dough which MUST kept frozen otherwise it fails when it gains temperature (Terms of calorie energy)

Reefers maintain temperature of whatever is cooled and loaded into it. You might wait a few days and nights while blast cooler freezes the product.

Meat loads take a few days to wait on loading, there is a few thousand migrants chopping inside those plants, 550 boxes of steak for example. Center Cut. You will wait a while before it's ready. But when you are loaded and bills in hand, there is no hotter load in the Country. Whole cities depend on your timely delivery.

Reefers heat product to protect in winter such as Paint. Fun times.

You have to be deaf sometimes when that thing is howling in high range.

Baby sit the temperatures all the time. You get used to it.

If the reefer malfunctions and starts to literally cough, you have to go out of route as necessary on a emergency drive to a Carrier or Transcold, whatever your reefer may be to save the load. They will fix or rebuild same within a few hours. They know it's priority.

You usually carry pallets. Figure that into your weight.

Your miles vary from 50 miles LTL for a week on a single load out every stop for 30 stops or more. Or you might be a team as we were running LA to Avenel NJ in two and half days with a turn back to FFE LA in the 5th day. It's very intense. 8000 ground miles, 6700 or so paid round trip.

Sometimes you load in Yakima, apples etc. You wont stop until Boston, NYC, Atlanta etc. As a single driver you got maybe 4 days to get it done or a team will be sent to collect your late load. They must go through.

You never stop until you are actually at home standing at your front door. That could be weeks. Months or a whole year.

Many times we load the reefer like a dry van. Or take in brass coil going to remington Lonoke AR from Buffalo for ammunition at 60 degrees running to protect it.

You will love it. You will also learn to hate certain shippers and not visit them anymore. Americold comes to mind, arlington Tx, salinas Ca etc really poor loading.

Any OSD, over short and damage will be charged to you unless you can prove that it's not your fault. That means taking a picture of the load when loading with date and time stamp on it. And another picture of the sealed trailer. And another picture of your unit, trailer and shipper sign. If it is loaded beautiful then.. you will be ok.

I can go on. But Reefer work feeds the Nation. You will either have too much work or not enough work if you are not as good as you need to be with dispatch.

 

You'll love it or you'll hate it not much in between with reefer ... Hurry up and wait applies to almost every load or your fined

 

In comparison to most dry van and flatbed and tanker gigs [as much of this is "regional"] temperature controlled at a 48 state carrier are generally longer hauls in terms of length. However some outfits like Marten and others do a lot of regional (shorter) hauls, and/or have regional temp control fleets.

If you're careful about where you choose to work, temp controlled work can be rewarding and enjoyable, otherwise, it can suck really bad. But it's all relative to what you're coming from and what you're looking for.

 

I drive reefer short haul. From distribution center to grocery stores for a few stops, and then back home. Usually a 10 hour day.

 

I've been doing reefer for five years and hate it.

 

There's a whole array of reefer runs; local, regional, long haul. Be careful what you sign up for so you get what you really want.
B&G Supply in Albertsville has a mix within the company.
Figure out if you want coast to coast or not and go from there.

 

I didn't know my life could be summarized so perfectly.

Just don't forget to throw in the occasional dose of pallet jack and forklift curbside treatment. When some idjut in the office decides to string together some small customers in a major city. And "a sleeper truck came here once (yeah in 1970)."

"We've had two trucks hit that wall this week"
" Out of how many"
"Your number 3"

I don't know, maybe I get the "fun" stuff cause they can't trust swiftlings to do it. Or perhaps because I was stupid enough to do NYC, and that sealed my fate.


I'm well utilized, eat, sleep, run, repeat. Get on here when a customer is being slow as ####.

I do long haul, yes. And with delivery windows to the freaking minute occasionally.