Spec'ing a truck for hauling a flatbed.

What did you haul?


in 19 years of open deck, the only exception to being offroad I have had was hauling jet engines. Every other product I have hauled has gotten me into ####ty jobsites, not with every load, but certainly often enough to be an expectation

 

Whatever you see on a Maverick flatbed. They don’t do crap loads.

 

off road means crap loads?
I would think speccing a truck would be the last thing I would ask from a fleet driver at a mega. But as I recollect, you talked to the company mechanic one time so you know how to spec trucks, and what their component failure rate is per 100k miles.

pepperidge farms remembers.

 

Well yeah. Maverick and a lot of those carriers are heavily vested in fuel economy specced trucks so there's plenty of places you'll never get sent to. While those trucks have their place, it sure as #### ain't in the bush. Super singles, high rear ends and on highway suspensions that don't articulate well on uneven terrain which is most of em is asking for a tow bill.

 

If a load picks up or delivers in crap sites, they don’t mess with them. If the load itself is crap, such as siding and machinery, they don’t mess with them. They have an abundance of customers and loads available to them, because they minimize their risks and maximize their efficiency, which ensures quality transportation. I appreciated the fact they didn’t tolerate hauling crap, because I never had to deal with the extra BS crap loads entail. If you like dealing with it, knock yourself out.

I wouldn’t consider a 1600 truck fleet a “mega”. They didn’t operate like one, when I worked there, either. Steve Williams was always around and had an open door policy to anyone. The dispatch team was incredible. It was one of two great places I’ve worked.

What’s with the jab? You think you‘re the end-all be-all? Get over yourself. At least I’m in various shops, shows, and dealerships talking to everyone I can, learning everything I can. I’ve been fully immersed in this industry, nearly 30 years. I’d rather be who I am than some out-of-date big mouth still living in the past.

 

Again, you’re trying to take this into a vocational situation. The OP originally stated they were wanting to run 48 states as an OTR operation.

 

You've got some experience I'll give you that but, not enough if you're suggesting a road spec truck to an owner operator who's guaranteed to have to operate in some off the beaten path sites, sites I've been to @Ruthless has been to as well as many others on this forum. OTR or no OTR. There's many other posts on this forum about this exact topic with owner operators who've done flatbed chiming in and running 6x2 isn't even a forethought. It doesn't exist over here. I would never tell an owner operator to spec his truck based off the best case scenario and potentially get caught with his pants down but, that's what you're saying to do here. This may have worked over at Maverick but, this ain't Maverick.

 

https://imgur.com/a/LXqjP3D

From one of the first times I went to a site out in Kentucky and didn't know any better. Had a road specced truck and I had to wait for them to bring that trailer to me so I wouldn't get stuck because that's how nasty that lot was.

 

As a side topic, Freightliner is working with someone (Spicer?) on a 6X4 that has some type of ability to completely decouple one differential. I heard about it on a podcast. The guy wasn’t forthcoming with details of how it works. Basically, if you run heavier (over 20K) on the drives, it’ll offer all the same advantages of a deployed lift axle, but, still maintain the ability to enable driving both axles, when needed. I’ll be curious to hear more about this, if it makes it to production.

 

=basic fleet hauling of commodity goods to and from finished locations.

that is unlikely to be the experience of an OO whether operating locally or regionally or OTR

I’ve eaten frozen pizza for 30 years and talked to people about pizza: do I have the qualifications to tell someone opening a pizzeria how they should do it?
You’re offering opinions on a subject having had extremely limited managed task experience of an operation. That matches the pizza analogy.


If you want to advice on something, you ask someone doing it: not someone who has never done it.

You can take it as a jab, you can take it however you want: you can think of me what you want.

Owning a business, making significant consequential decisions for said business and performing a managed task are 2 totally different things.