Do it on my own

Not all megas are bad companies. Personally, I prefer to be a number and not a name; just pay me correctly and everything is cool.

 

Roehl flatbed is a good place to start your career. In a few months you can go about anywhere.
TMC has their own cdl school , but hires from only a few states for the school.

 

Nick Strimbu Inc. has cdl school for flatbed and reefers.
Reefers run long coast to coast runs. Flatbed, if what I've read is true, do mostly short regional runs which means the paychecks may not be too good. Call and ask about that.
They are Teamsters.

 

3 years ago I was in a similar position. After about 2000 miles I took and passed the test. This was on Thursday and Friday I took my first solo load 10' wide to a residential area. Monday my load was 11'6" wide, 14'8" tall and weighed in at 120k gross. Since then I have gross 210000 pounds and was 155 feet long.

It's not the way I would tell people to do things but it can be done. You could die doing any kind of truck driving so don't let these guys scare you from what you want to do.

I didn't have any good training or any securement training at all I had to learn it on my own.

 

Let me temper your thoughts on flatbed doing short regional. When I ran for EcKMiller, my Ravens 48 footer and Volvo N11 was good for the entire USA including Canada where necessary.

The dispatcher I ran with discovered that I did well running east of NM, south of KY and anywhere on the east coast. There were times I penetrated Texas all the way to Eagle Pass and Laredo.

I did run for daily 260 mile radius delivery at 8 am anywhere in that circle each day with DM Bowman And they discovered I specialized in mountain work during my first winter. So up to Altoona from either Williamsport or Frederick and work over some of the steep ridge; Allentown, Richmond, Norfolk Navy yard loads (Pre-TWIC cards in those days... just don't give the sentry a hard time when they ask your eye color)

Anderson trucking service out of Mn offered specialized national with oppertunities that simply do not exist elsewhere such as going into Aberdeen Maryland to the Ordinance Museum there and loading a Soviet T34 main battle tank for transport somewhere secret, running, driving and working. I was introduced to the driver who was assigned to this particular tank after he loaded it in the 76 at easton. Quite an afternoon and a fast education in tanking. Another time we ran into a load of a Intruder Fuselage used in "The Flight of the Intruder" where the body of the plane was on the ground after it crashed in a certain amount of scenes during the middle two thirds of the movie.

Long flatbed posting short... with the right outfit and depending on how the freighting rolls you will find certain things for life experiences that there is no monetary value can be assigned to such. Essentially priceless.

I have stated in the past flatbedding is a joy and not so much work work...