Why can't I find Flatbed drivers to haul my loads?

Short answer. It's lumber. Lumber sucks. Getting those short loads moved for three bucks a mile is gonna be hard. I'd say the only reason the other brokers are getting them moved is the customer has given then a higher rate, or they have found some cheap cheap cheap freight haulers and keep them busy so they don't have a chance to figure out what they should be getting paid to deal with lumber.

 

I can't speak for others, only for myself. It's all about the money for the time invested. In my experience, the most profitable loads are time sensitive finished goods. Not the raw materials. An example of this would be a boiler or chiller. They pay good, are very fast to lead and unload. And light so less fuel burn(more profit). An exception to this is steel during peak manufacturing seasons.

Really, there is no preferred product. It's about the money, not the product. To give you an example, the load i am currently on is just under 3/mile, on 1750 miles. Originated in a weak area and finals in a slightly better area. It's approximately 4x5x5 and weighs under 10k lbs. I can easily get well over 8mpg on this load, and it took under thirty minutes to load and tarp. Here's the kicker, six months ago I would have never taken this load, but it's winter and rates are down and i was cold and sick of being in snow up to my butt.

If this is a load I would normally turn down, does it help explain why those 46k lb full lumber tarps that take a half day or more to load are not getting any bites? Not trying to be snarky here just trying to show how #### spoiled us flat bed guys are. We are like ten year old brats that have never been told "no you can't have tha new toy".

 

Hey Tim, sadly, your situation just shows where trucking of the future is going. Flatbed is one of the most labor intensive trucking jobs out there, and, for the most part, new age truckers, with some exceptions, of course, come from backgrounds that hard work just wasn't part of their work ethic. They go into trucking, thinking, all I have to do is sit on my tush, bump a dock, and go to sleep. I didn't do a lot of flatbed, as I don't do well with heights and climbing, but never once in my 35 years got a lumper to unload a floor load. It's not necessarily about the money, it's about actually physically working. You don't see too many overweight flatbed drivers. Good luck, but I don't see a solution to your situation any time soon.

 

Semi, I got to completely disagree with you here. It's all about the money. More specifically, money to time ratio. The physical work with lumber tarps is almost a non factor, it's the time involvement. The rate he has to work with is rather low for the time the load is going to take.

 

short miles 300 need to pay more,,truck needs to earn $1200/day plus $100 min for tarping

 

That's ok, spyder, I just don't share your optimism. From the short time I've been here, and from what I hear about the kind of "trucker" these schools are turning out, combined with a post like Tim's, tells me most people just don't want to work that hard anymore. I may be wrong, but this is just how an old-timer see's things. As an O/O, which I think you are, you see things differently, but when I check job postings, flatbed jobs are, by far, the most often posted. You said it yourself, that lumber load is one you'd normally turn down in favor of the light load with minimal tarping, which is ok. I'm just saying, no one wants to do the BS work, which it seems like his loads are.

 

I tend to agree with Spyder on this . When I started in trucking the potential pay difference between a company flatbed and dry van was only about $5,000. For that extra $5,000 a flat bedder works WAY harder than I do and has more personal risk.

It's like the old math teachers question - would you rather have a penny a day, doubled, for a year or $1,000,000 today? What is going to get me the most per unit of labor?

 

Make the most money as efficiently as possible...like it's been stated before lumber is almost never quick