What type of Trailer do you perfer to Haul? What's the most profitable?

I'm hauling Dry Van freight off the Load Board. No problem finding freight. I travel from the West Coast to the East Coast along I-10 and I-40. Deliver and pick up a fair amount in between (Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee). The Loading and unloading times can be excessive. Some company's pay detention and some don't. Detention doesn't pay enough to make up for the lost running time. I've been considering switching over to a refer, but I'll still have all the down time at the dock.
What's been your experience been with Flat Bed, Tanker or ?

 

There is waiting time / delays involved regardless what you pull YES INCLUDING TANKERS it just varies with more time on some trailers / loads than others.

 

Dry van is bottom of the barrel. It's what everyone, especially the bottom feeders, runs. You're competing with Joe Dummy who will crap on himself while earning 20 cpm, and the receivers lump you in with him. While nothing is a guarantee, doing something more specialized, such as tanker, heavy haul, etc generally gets you further away from crappy shippers and receivers. But you'll always find them every now and then no matter what you pull.

 

If you want zero down time, as in for a team operation - go LTL, or drop and hook preloaded trailers.

The industry has not yet adressed the glaring problem of unpaid detention/dock time.

As far as I have HEARD, and not experienced, it's less in the flatbed/open deck world, but you'lll still hit a situation where they don't have the equipment/men/time to unload you when you're there

 

in some areas you can do good with dry van and lots of loads are light

 

name another industry that pays its employees for down-time

 

there is one good thing about tank

you don't have to worry about hunting down a blue beacon or *insert truck wash here* for hours unpaid. they either are washed on the spot or they are taken to a tank wash and you're paid for that as well

 

Really? You again?

 

"I say, I say. Go away boy, you're bothering me"

 

Factory work...in my experience if a production line had a technical problem,which caused the work to stop for an indefinite period of time. In most cases the production laborers would be standing around on the clock until the problem was fixed...at least that was my experience in one line of work. I could probably name several more too...