Own Authority Flatbed

georgia and alabama are the best flatbed freight spots out there. Whats hard is finding loads that pay decent to get back.

Youll spend a lot of your first years filling out carrier packets with new brokers. When you call a new place ask how many pages their packet is. 2 or 4 ok. 22, and they need you to add them to your insurance in order to haul $1.90 freight is a waste of time.

You get your load board subscription, call, hey this is joe at xyz trucking, MC is 678910, im calling about calhoun to greensboro flat load. Theyll know how new you are from the number and will either say sorry or move forward if theyre okay with new MC. Ask the details on load, crunch the numbers, hash out the money and times. Then theyll want your email to fill out packet. You send that back, they approve and send the ratecon. You send it back [i think] and go get your load. But READ the ratecon before you roll.. They hide a lotta BS in there they dont say on the phone. If its bad throw it back and find something else.

 

This is a quick and dirty to the point post. Excellent write up.

 

In general, do 1 million liability, another million in General liability Incase someone falls of your trailer etc. $100,000 cargo, and physical is up to you what’s your equipments worth. And don’t forget uninsured motorist. ‘This is basic stuff. I have more and other coverages due to some broker wanting over protection.

 

I used to have my DOT authority and chose to deactivate it because it is too costly for a one truck operation. Also, it is very difficult to drive, look at loadboards, call brokers, fill out broker's contract, calling insurance for Certificate of insurance for every new broker packet, and faxing or emailing back and forth. Then do billings and invoicing, and keeping tracking of who has paid. Many brokers wants original signed BOL in order to get paid so mailing individual BOL to seperate brokers is costly and you hope mail does not get lost. Also, DOT loves to pick on small company. You will get pull in a lot for inspections.

As for brokers denying you loads because of new authority, that mostly happens to Dryvans in competitive markets when there are more trucks than loads. Flatbed usually do not have issues with being new. You will have issues with getting freight if you have bad DOT safety ratings. Being that you will get more DOT inspections and one out of service violation will put you at 100% violation since you only have 1 truck. This 100% out of service is bad because it says all of your level 1 inspections resulted in serious violations that put you Out of Servive. In order to bring this down to acceptable ratings of having less than 20% out of service, you need 4 clean level 1 inspections for every fail inspections. DOT do not like to do level 1 inspections unless you already failed it by having bad tires, lights such as turn and brake lights. If all of these are good during a walk around, they will most likely do a level 2 or 3 inspection and will refuse to do a level 1 inspection even if asked. All inspections resulting in an Out of Service are Level 1 inspections. Having pass 10 clean level 2 and 3 inspections will not help bring up your DOT rating.

In all, DOT have put many independent like myself out of business.