Conostega or Curtainside

I would't even touch a curtain side unless your hauling something very specific, like lumber. I would think your giving up a huge percentage of loads by going to just a curtain side, lots of loads are crane or overhead loaded with some type of equipment. I would have the conastoga in a heart beat or just an open deck. Good Luck!

 

probem with curtain side is not ony can you not take top load freght, you loose some side load freght. Insulation generaly is 13'6 when your done, and thus wont quite fit in the curtain side. Over dimensional lumber wont fit either. Long freight like i beams might not be able to get around the center support.

 

We have curtain sides and conestoga's. The curtain sides are a royal pain in the posterior. You can't load anything longer than the space between one of the side supports and either the front or rear because you can only take one support out at a time. (Okay, you can take both out but the top sags so bad that you have to use a forklift to hold it up to get the supports back in.) You cannot crane or overhead hoist load and all those friggen buckles take time to latch. Then if you don't keep the rollers well lubed, clean and in good condition then just pulling the curtains open is a struggle. In the amount of time it takes to unlatch 1/2 of the buckles on a curtain I can have a connie opened and be loading. Then in the amount of time it takes to latch 1/3 of the buckles I can have the connie closed and be rolling.

So I guess you know where I stand. Anything that you can get in a curtain side will go in a conestoga but there are things that go in a conestoga that will not go in a curtain - crane loads, anything over 100" wide, long stuff etc.

As for using the curtainside as a dry van. Well some shippers may allow it but most that require a dry van will balk at a curtainside. Securement and more importantly security become an issue with many dry van loads. Apple probably doesn't like the idea of you hauling palletized Mac's with only a piece of tarp protecting it from others. Granted if someone wants in bad enough it doesn't matter but look at it from a shippers point of view.

 

It depends on your lanes & customers.

I haul a lot of dry van loads in my curtainside.

Many shippers will not load van loads in a conestoga because they want a solid roof & rear doors. Products that are prone to falling off the pallets, like some beverage loads, are actually more secure when properly tied down in a curtain.

You can load wider in a curtain than you can in a conestoga. Load width in a conestoga is limited by the side tracks. With a curtain you can use extenders to move the poles out further or spot the load so that there are gaps where the poles go. You can't load a curtain from overhead or haul anything longer than the deck. If you keep the curtain tracks lubed you can pull a curtain open or shut with one hand.

I never snivel about dealing with the buckles, the poles, or anything else. I've seen enough frozen, wet or mud encrusted tarps that either a curtain or a conestoga makes me feel like I'm almost cheating.

 

It won't be too many more years before you start to see curtainsides being more common and accepted here. In Europe and Australia they are just as common as dry vans. But we aren't there yet. Get a conestaga or just a plain old flatbed and good light weight tarps.

 

Either one is way better than tarping.

 

There is not many dry vans here in Australia lots of curtain siders. I'd nearly goes as far as say curtain siders out number flats. They make tilting curtain siders now so you can load with a crane. Insulated curtains for chilled freight and load restraint curtains to save the use of side gates.

 

Has anyone ever ran coils with a Conestoga?

 

Not coils per say but we load titanium ingots on connies every day, in fact where we pick them up at will only load a connie or open deck, no hard tops period.