flatbed vs. dry van

Good luck getting a full day of driving when you're loading, unloading, delivering to a place Saturday that is closed weekends, spending hours finding a load, deadhead, etc.

 

Your going to be in for a rude awakening.

 

Places that quit receiving at 14:00....

 

A lot of people can't hack it. Can you drive 8 hours straight? How about starting a day at 6am, driving 11 hours, going to bed at 8pm to get up at 4am, then again the next day at 2am just to make the appointment? (This week sucked) It's not a vacation.

 

Those are unrealistic expectations ignoring even basic facts of life such as the hos rules.

You are aware of the hos rules right?
11 hours driving within a 14 hour window. No more than 70 hours on duty (which includes all driving, loading, unloading, fueling, daily pre and post trip inspections) in an 8 day period. That's 8.75 hours per day. 30 minutes of which will be spent between fueling and inspecting your equipment. Add in loading and unloading time each day and just how exactly are you going to be running 3600 miles every 7 days?

3600 miles a week literally can only happen with long coast to coast runs, which rarely pay crap. Or by blatantly ignoring hos rules.

I'll try to give an example of a realistic typical week under perfect conditions with no time spent looking for and negotiating loads.

Monday: Load at 8 am, 600 miles for a Tuesday early am delivery, you park 1 hour away because very few businesses allow you to spend the night in their parking lot and of those that would 50% of them are in cities that prohibit it.

Tuesday:You start your day at 630 and show up to get unloaded at 8 am and if everything goes perfect you are out by 10 am. Drive 2 hours for your reload, another 2 hours getting loaded. Its now 2 pm. the load goes 600 miles but because of hos you can only drive 5.5 hours. @60 mph average that's 325 miles. So you park a few minutes early so you don't risk going over your hos and get your post trip inspection done and log off duty at 730 pm. You are still 275+ miles from your customer and can't even go on duty to start your day until 530 am.

Wednesday: 530 am you do a quick pre trip and drive 5 hours to be at your customer at 1030 am. Empty by noon. 2 hours dh to nrxt load (another 600 mile run), 2 hours getting loaded. Its 430 pm and you can only drive 3 hours till 730pm.

Thursday; start at 530 again but now we are 420 miles away. That's 7 hours so we get there at 12:30. 2 hours to get unloaded and its 230 pm. Hope your next load is right around the corner or you aint getting loaded today. Realistically its gonna Friday before you reload so we book a longer load to make the best of our time. 1200 miles for a Monday morning delivery. You know why we won't deliver Saturday? Because you got a flatbed and the VAST majority of places that ship and recieve flatbed freight are monday through Friday 7 to 3.

Friday: you load and start progressing towards delivery setting yourself up as close to the customer as possible by Saturday afternoon.

Do you know why we want to be parked near the customer early Saturday afternoon and not stretch it out to sunday? This is a real question that even a 3 month rookie driver knows the answer to. If you don't know the answer them its a big neon sign that screams you need a TON more industry knowledge before buying a truck. Obviously you can get that knowledge a bunch of different ways, many suggest be a company driver for a year. I'm not saying that. I say screw that. I've never been a company driver and learned just fine operating my own truck so no reason you can't. I'm saying its a big flaming billboard of a sign you need to study more. A lot more.