Flatbed trucking-Possible?

Ummm you wont be unloading anything lady. You wont have the strength to lift tons of equipment off your vehicle nor will anyone let you drive their fork truck or use a crane. Just how did you think you would unload a flatbed yourself? You will wait until the unloading crew has the time to get to you. Unless you plan on hooking up a bunch of chains to the equipment then drive the truck out from beneath it to let the equipment crash to the ground. Chances are that will be your last job driving.

 

Now where in the world did you get the idea I thought I would be unloading everything by hand for crying out loud. I'm a certified forklift driver. And its one of the prerequisite's for getting a cdl at my local comm college. Apparently there are times when you do have to unload your own truck so they make you get certified.

 

Congratulations on the job OPALWY. I think your are being realistic and practical now.
I do have to agree with Brickmans last post regarding unloading. Due to insurance regulations you would not be permitted to use any of the receivers power equipment. Since OSHA stepped in about 3 years ago companies have stopped permitting "outside vendors from using on site power equipment." This was a real pain for drivers going to grocery warehouses as well as they used to be able to use an electric pallet jack to unload their own trailer. That is no longer the case and now if you decide to unload your own trailer you will be given a handjack. Trust me when I tell you this: "hire the lumper service, give them the check Werner issues to you for this." It will make your life less stressful and chances are you will get out faster.
Some of the "games" played by receivers to punish drivers for not utilizing the unloading service would be to limit the floor space for staging your pallets, taking their time in inspecting and tagging your freight, not having enough pallets available to separate your mixed pallets, and not moving the checked freight out of the way in a timely manner to allow you to continue offloading your truck. With some of the older warehouses they had smaller rack systems as well and would require freight to be transferred from "big pallets" to their "small pallets." Any broken pallets would also require the whole pallet to be restacked. These are just some of the reasons grocery warehouses have such a bad reputation. I will not even get into the wasted time waiting for a dock assignment and heaven forbid if you are a few minutes late! These are prime reasons why you may want to steer clear of reefers. Dry vans will go to grocery warehouses as well but not as frequently as out reefer pulling counter parts.

 

Any one can do flat bed if their not afraid of hard work.
i have done it for 18 years and it can be challenging ,with the weather.winter is the worst,but there is only really about 2 to 3 weeks that is is real hard to work with tarps.Yes you will have to climb up one your load(sometimes 13/6)but you dont carry your tarps up,thats what a fork lift is for.Any company that thinks your going to do it is out of their mind.YOUR safety is your first priority.I now this as i fell off a 13 6 load and am very
lucky to be here.if you want to do flat bed then do it and take pride in the job you do.