Plenty of dispatch services are really van shops that will take your flatbed if you insist. The first time you need a permit for an over width load, you find out. We run all eight, and the dispatcher on your account knows the difference between securing coils and securing lumber.
Requirements below are what brokers in these lanes typically ask for. If you are close but not quite there, call anyway. Authority age is the one that moves least, everything else has room in it.
The backbone of the freight market and the easiest equipment to keep moving. Consumer goods, packaged food, paper, retail replenishment. Volume is high, which means rates soften faster than other equipment when a market turns, so lane selection matters more than most carriers expect.
Produce, dairy, frozen, pharmaceuticals. Reefer pays better than van and it is less exposed to soft markets because the freight has to move regardless. It also carries the most claim risk in the business, so we are careful about temperature terms on the confirmation and about brokers with a history of disputing them.
Steel, lumber, machinery, building materials, pipe. The rates are stronger than van work and the freight is steadier through downturns because construction and industrial output keep moving. The trade off is that you are working: tarping, strapping, chaining, and a securement standard that gets inspected.
Where flatbed freight is too tall for a standard deck. The drop gives you roughly two extra feet of legal height, which opens up equipment, tanks, and machinery that a flatbed has to permit. Fewer trucks compete for it, so the rate premium over flatbed is usually worth the ramps in your toolbox.
Partial loads, expedited runs, final mile and regional distribution. Box truck work rewards a dispatcher who understands that your economics are different: shorter runs, more stops, and a rate per mile that has to be read against your much lower operating cost. A liftgate and a pallet jack open up meaningfully more freight.
Smaller flatbed freight moving fast. Equipment, pipe, machinery, and the loads that are too urgent or too small to wait for a full size truck. Rates per mile look excellent on paper and often are, but only if the deadhead is managed carefully, which is exactly where a dispatcher earns their keep on hotshot work.
You bring the tractor, the shipper supplies the loaded trailer. No trailer payment, no trailer maintenance, no tarps, and drop and hook at both ends means far less time at a dock. The rate per mile sits lower than van work, but so does your cost base, and the utilisation is usually better.
Flatbed freight that needs protecting, without the hour of tarping at each end. The canopy rolls back, the load goes on from the side or the top, the canopy rolls forward. Shippers pay for it because it is faster for them too, and there are far fewer of these trailers out there than there is freight asking for them.
Rate ranges are indicative all in figures for planning conversations and move constantly with lane, season and market. Requirements reflect what brokers commonly ask for and vary between them.
A lot of our small fleets do. Two vans and a flatbed, or a reefer that runs dry in the winter. You get one dispatcher across the whole operation rather than a different contact for each trailer, and one weekly invoice that itemises every truck.
If you are thinking about adding a different trailer type, tell us before you buy it. We can tell you what the freight actually looks like in your lanes for that equipment right now, which is more useful than a forum thread from two years ago.
We will search live freight against your exact equipment and your home base, and show you what we would have put you on this week.
