Tanker driver thinking down sizing cargo van

are you talking about the regular cargo vans, like a ford econoline 350, or the big ones with sleepers?

for the small ones it seems you need to live near a big airport. if you're near houston i bet you're fine.

I've looked into this a little bit myself, and the requirements i read were that it has to have E-Trac and has to have a divider between the front and cargo area. You need to call the companies that run these vans. I know JB Hunt and Panther II run them.

 

A dividers are not required
Many van expediters have hinged pull down plywood bunks they sleep on
Ive never heard of JB Hunt running cargo vans?????
Some of the extended sprinter vans have room for separate sleeping quarters, not to bad

 

Baack, thank you for the photo. I had wondered what the bunk area looked like in some of the cargo vans. I didn't know how much room there was and where you would put things. Is this what a standard van would look like, or is this more custom? I'm getting closer each day to getting in one, and I was curious how they were set up.

 

Thats a picture of a sprinter sleeper
Cargo vans dont have enough room to get four pallets in and have a sleeper also

 

Very few cargo vans in epedite work out of airports . Think about it . If somebody wants something on a plane they will use FedEx or UPS for door to door service and tracking .
There are limited services that use expediters from airports . Caskets from online casket companies exceed the size limitations of UPS and FedEx . Donated organs between hospitals are transported on smaller charter jets .
There are far too many cargo vans in the industry . Too many people look for the easy way in . Vans sit a lot because of limited load capacity . Expedite carriers will allow straight trucks to broker LTL freight out of dead areas but most of that freight requires dock height truck .
If I was in TX I'd look into hotshotting . Things are slow there also but you have a lot more load potential . If you have a flatbed with gooseneck hitch there are quite a few loads that can go on the bed without pulling the trailer .

 

One thing about driving cargo van is that you are not e "real" trucker and if you want to go back to big truck some day lets say in four or five years you will not be a qualified big truck driver as far as some companies see it. Just something to think about.

 

The same is true with an expedite straight truck but it's easy to move up from a cargo van to a straight truck . When worked right an expedite straight truck offers far better opportunity than driving for an OTR carrier .