How to get into heavy haul

I'm surprised he didn't mention Farm2Fleet,everytime someone asks for recommendations on a company he mentions them. Yes I know they don't do HH.

 

One of the most important things I've learnt that you need to get into heavy haul is patience. You have to be patient to get all the experience you need. The minimum requirements are at least 2-3 times longer than regular CDL jobs. The waiting and building of your experience will help prepare you for the waiting that is involved in heavy haul. Whether its waiting for the crane to be set up and sitting for 4 hours to get unloaded, or waiting for curfew to end, or waiting for the wind to die down so they can unload you. Or waiting for no reason other than some desk jockey who doesn't know #### about your job to give you approval, waiting is a big part of the game.

Not everyone can handle that aspect of the game. Sometimes you got to sit and let the 15 ####### in the 4 wheelers cut in front of you so you can make your exit / turn.

 

Who are the biggest HH carriers....in terms of fleet size ?

Keene and Daily......?

 

Just call it what it is.... Covenant.

 

I'm 27 & Heavy hauling/OS out of Miami and I've been all over the South Eastern US with 7/8 axles, RGN normally. We pull RGN, stretch flats, stretch RGNs, landolls, modulars, drop decks, whatever it takes to get the job done. I came from a year of equipment hauling and I already knew how to run most of the machinery we haul.

I got lucky with my job (small owner/op fleet of 6 trucks) needed someone who was willing to shut up and go haul stuff. I offered to work for free for a week and if he didn't think i was going to cut it then, no hard feelings, see ya later. Well I got the job, got paid for the week & it's been a year and I'm still there, running the biggest & most complicated things we haul. You are going to have to work hard because nothing is easy (ever tied anything down with a 20' 1/2" chain or stacked a bunch of 80-90lb blocks of dunnage to crib a machine?) You'll be parking a 1/2 mile down the street and walking out your entry/exit plan often because you cant exactly just come flying in, say " oops" and back up a lot of the time. The customer will look to you to see how the heck to stage it/load it/move it.... because on specialized work they call your company and say "it's L" X W" X H" and we think it weighs this much... it's going to this address, what do we do?" If you don't know either then everyone looks like a knucklehead.

You will be hired with no experience under the understanding that you are going to make mistakes,but what will make or break the deal is: are you the kind of person that pays attention, has common sense, patience & can adapt to things that go wrong or change in a hurry?

I have a novel of things I have learned coming from a similar situation like yours, however you not being 25 (for insurance reasons... HH insurance is very expensive) may be your biggest problem. There is a shortage of people that possess the unique desire to WANT to hang all over the road and almost run over or destroy everything on a daily basis. Offer to help, get your foot in the door.... find a HH or crane and rigging company and run the support truck or paving company moving OS machines around a lot.

As for buying your own set-up for HH... that's a big financial endeavour... you will need much beefier equipment and be working on it often. Just because it's got a lift axle doesn't make it a HH tractor- not by a mile.
You need a big motor, lots of gears, heavy duty front & rears, double frame, serious 5th wheel slide length, wet kit, wheelbase so that your bridge length is where it needs to be for where you plan to run. Your CPM is much higher than a normal plastic sleeper truck with a headache rack on the back. As for making money, it's hard to keep a lowboy filled with good paying stuff all the time. You have a long & heavy rig and not a lot of room to use to make your money with. I'm at 80' long and 48K empty. so that only gives me 32K until i'm running with a permit. Which, I won't even get into the permit process and how retarded that whole deal is. I have 26' of well and a boom trough in the back.... so I only really have 26' of space to haul with maybe something small on the trunions. In the machine world you don't get much that weighs under 32 that will pay decent on your CPM because you'll be fighting flats, stepdecks and even hotshots for the same work when your not hauling heavy.