How did you get your start in Heavy Haul

I'm 30...been doing it just over 4 years. Not much to it to get started. Just pick a heavy haul company n get to work lol

 

In Jan. 1978, I quit a good paying petroleum hauling gig when I was offered a job driving the truck in my avatar. Moving oil drilling rigs, const. equip, drill pipe, Baker tanks, winching and such. The senior driver did most of the equipment moves til I learned the ropes. That was a good start. Almost 42 years ago. Back then,there were a lot of things done that wouldn't be done now, we learned a lot of what ""not to do". These days a crane co., or equipment rental yards is a good start.

 

I got into it in 87 by luck.Been between that and flatbedding ever since.

 

If you cant strait away get a heavy haul gig you could try all your local graders and pavers.
Get a key for every piece of equipment and learn to load them all. On that level a driver that can load his self is handy so it dont short a crew somewhere else of an important operator 30 miles away.
Theres always places where you have to have flaggers to load also.
One of the trickiest things to do is to sit in the highway and side load a 68,000 lb Cat 330 when its setting 6ft lower than the pavement.

 

Works the same by us. New drivers start with the legal stuff and work into big loads.

 

I started doing some heavy haul not long after starting at the company I work for.

I started at 31, now almost 38.

Only had AZ for a couple months then but started with over-dimension loads first.

The guy that did heavy haul with us was going to retire a few years after so I learned from him and another driver that did float/lowboy.

Both guys are gone, retired. I’m doing both heavy flat, step deck, b-train and float/lowboy. We also got our first tri-axle live bottom 2 years ago.

Live bottom may not be quite heavy haul with only 36 metric tons, but when off-road, it makes the truck work really hard.