Day to day life as a CDL driver - Flatbed? OTR

I did flatbed for a year. I liked it just fine. Ran 48 states and Canada. Flatbed has the best customers, shippers, receivers to deal with. I was with Western Express. Only reason I left flatbed was because I could make more money pulling reefers. Did reefers for 18 years OTR and no complaints. I can deal with jerk people in the reefer world. I tune them out, which puts them on the defensive.

 

Hire on with a reefer company that has 'driver-no-touch' freight.
I've always worked for CPM with good assessorial pays.

 

Here's an example of assessorial pays that are in addition to CPM:
$80,000 Annual Average Pay

Free Medical Insurance (Imagine 360), Dental and Vision Insurance

4 Weeks Paid Vacation

Company-matched 401k

Referral, Safety, Employment, and Fuel Bonuses

Detention and stop off pay
Detention and stop off pay:
Usually a set dollar amount for the stop, to load/unload. Then, for example, after an hour or two hours, hourly pay starts.

 

I have worked for companies that paid for pre-trip inspection, post-trip inspection, fueling the truck as long as all that was logged. There's more, but varies by company.

 

Ignore the 'Negative-Nancies' because this is about you, not them.

 

Who,,,who is da' negative Nancy's? Day to day life, let's see,,, that depends greatly on the type of trucking. In a flatbed, typically, a lot of flatbed freight is regional, so you might spend half a day loading, tarping, run to the customer, and camp out and spend the next half a day unloading. Repeat. Now, OTR is much different. Say you load something in NY for Cal., all,,,you,,,do,,,is,,,drive. Biggest concern is where to spend the night, usually 2 or 3. Deliver, repeat. Sometimes getting to your reload is another half a day. There are advantages to both. Flatbed requires some thinking and probably the most dangerous, but unlike an OTR job, that is boring as heck, flatbed offers some creativity, and a basic rule of thumb, is the freight can't fall off. I'd have to think flatbed pays a bit more, you do a lot more work, OTR van/reefer is predictable and pretty much the same thing day to day. Many times flatbed is more bulky than 22 pallets of cheese, so weight isn't a big concern, like a box, and empty is a breeze. I'd go with flatbed, the nicest thing, is no docks, no pallets, and above all, THEY ARE WAITING FOR YOU! TMC has been around a long time, and probably has rock solid accounts. In a box, "park around back, we'll come and get you",,

 

I work for one of TMCs largest competitors, and I see them at all of the same places. It is definitely job security now that robot trucks are constantly in the news. Shippers take safety very seriously and accidents during loading/unloading are extremely rare. Many these days have a tarping machine or a doohickey on their forklift that can open your tarps and set them on the load for you, so all you have to do is bungee them. Some loads are definitely a headache to secure and tarp, I don't want to make it sound too easy, (carry padding!) but for the most part the securement isn't really that bad. I'd even go as far as saying that it's the ONLY bad thing about flatbed. You do not really wait to get loaded or unloaded. It's extremely rare you sit at a customer's for more than a couple hours, max. If you're changing trailers, most of the time you actually drop the empty one you arrived with in their yard and pick up a preload (you still have to secure it, the yard dog just took it out of the loading bay) so there's no driving around looking for an empty before you can get reloaded. You are legal up to 40,000 lbs on the trailer, and your axles do not slide. 99% of your shippers and receivers will be MF 9-5, and many of them will be FCFS rather than a fixed appointment. So basically in exchange for a little bit of outdoor physical labor, you get to avoid almost all the little procedural headaches that most other types of freight have to deal with.

 

Oh, and unless you're hauling insulation you are in far less danger during high wind situations.