Comments By BugSmasherOne (Paul K.)

You'll need to catch me. In Wells, NV for the night. Into Sacramento in the morning. Deliver in Newark, CA Monday morning.

Old School, hope you got there before the good stuff was gone. Enjoy some for me!

Just finished driving from Fargo, ND and parked at Flyin J in Belgrade MT. Roads were in great shape. Had light snow flurries just east of Billings and from Livingston to Belgrade.

Another short break from the flatbed. Dropped it at our terminal in MN and picked up this trailer, heading for Charleston, SC. Will be getting there Sunday evening if the weather and roads allow.

Finally, another break in the action...

Completed the previous stop at 1800 Monday, tear down and loaded the demo units, then drive over night to next stop. TA in Barstow, CA. In order to get to next stop that evening to scout demo ride area, I need to take an 8 in the sleep while the demo guys clean and repair the four demo units. The other driver takes the flatbed with four units for the Sand Sports Super Show to Costa Mesa for in-loading at the show grounds.

Off to second dealer training area, there is no address, but the GPS coordinates are 34.555155/-116.770702.

Dooh, not good.

And away we go. Only six miles farther now.

Finally, we can scout trails for tomorrows training.

Here is the setup for the day of dealer training.

After the training, its load up and return to TA in Barstow for clean and polish of both trucks and trailers, and the four units that are going to the Super Sports Sand Show. Little Sisters truck wash really helped us out. A nights sleep, then down to the Orange County Fairgrounds and Event Center to unload and set up.

I thought I would be able to get a good break and do some sight seeing around LA and beaches, but nope, flying to Phoenix with the other driver to reposition 4 other tractor/trailer units from Phoenix to Glamis CA for different dealer training and demo shows coming up.

We moved the upper two trucks on the first trip as they were the ones that started. The others required jump starts as the batteries were dead, before we could relocate those the following day. Dropped off one tractor trailer, dropped the other trailer, and bobtailed to El Centro to get a rental car to get back to Phoenix to get remaining trucks started and run down to Glamis.

Only got a pic of one of the last two trucks. Again drop one truck and trailer, and bobtail with the other to El Centro to get the rental car, then 2 trips back and forth to get the tractors back to the trailers in Glamis. Then back to Costa Mesa for a much needed 34 hour in a motel before load-out after the show.

I haven't posted much in awhile and many of you may not have seen any of my posts before so I will go back a little first. Went through CDL training with Knight Transportation in Olive Branch MS, Oct. 2013 and completed their Squire program and transferred to their newly start SAPA dedicated flatbed account April 2014. My plan was to stay for one year and get the first year experience.

Well, it took me until April 2016 before I found a job that I wanted to give a try. Knight had been a fantastic company to work with and I even recruited a driver to the SAPA account. Ya'll know him as "Old School" a frequent poster and great resource when you need him. I actually came across this job while fueling at the Flying J in Oklahoma City. Started talking to the driver at the next pump, called him 2 hours later for an interview and was basically hired then. They wanted me to start right away as the truck was empty, but I told them I wanted to give Knight a 2 week notice and then I wanted to take 2 weeks off for a cruise with my wife and get some appointment taken care of that had been neglected since being on the road so much. To my surprise, they agreed and let the truck sit idle until I got there.

Several of you have asked about quitting jobs and giving or not giving notice. For me it worked great giving the 2 week notice. My DM, same as Old Schools, kept me running just as hard. My 70 hour clock was getting low with poor recaps coming back, so we agreed to take the truck to the terminal and turn it in 2 days early. That worked best for both sides. I still get calls from the terminal manager, trying to rehire me, every time there is an opening on the SAPA account.

So, back to the subject line of the thread.

I left off on the Flatbed Variety thread with this picture...

This is the last load that I picked up with my flatbed. I had to get this off of one of the trailers that was being staged in Phoenix and bring it to Primm NV. There it was added to my partners trailer to go to LA for show.

I then dropped my flatbed and picked up a production trailer. The other trucks the company owns are not CARB compliant, so my partner and I have to meet them and run the trailers to the shows in California for the next couple of weeks.

Here is my trailer and some of the cargo for the shows.

Currently, we are set up for a show at an off road vehicle park just south of Folsom CA. This is what is giving me some time to complete a couple of posts. Arrived last night and setup, the stall do the training show for the dealers in the area, then reload the trailers. We transport them overnight to the next show, south of Barstow, then repeat to deliver to the show in LA for the weekend.

I'll post more pictures and we do the various shows.

Here are a couple of loads from the last 4 months working with the new company. After 2.5 years with Knight Transportation and working with the SAPA dedicated account, I decided to find another flatbed job that would get a greater variety of loads and be able to go to the western states again.

I am currently working with a company that owns several trucks, but only two are leased to Long Haul Trucking. So I have gone from a major fleet to a 2 truck company, leased to a company with 350 trucks (around 100 company drivers and 250 O/O).

On to the loads...

This is a load of glass panes for a commercial building. The panes are secured in a wooden frame, then the loaders nail cross pieces to the deck and build an A-Frame to hold the crates in place. Depending on the length, each row gets 2-3 straps.

These are railway "frogs", the first stop loaded these four, the second stop added 3 more smaller ones and one switch rail. The total load was 43,000 and 40 foot long. When I had finished securing it the way I liked it, I had on 10 chains (4700 wll each) and eight straps (5400 wll each).

I also got to haul a forklift. When I arrived for loading, the loaders said that there was no way it was going to fit. After some measuring and encouragement, I got them to drive it on. I had to rock the sliding top from side to side to get it past the bulge of the tires.

A lot of coils of different sizes and shapes. There are 7 coils on this load. Two, 18" wide coils in the middle and 1 on the rear loaded suicide. The front has a stack of four coils, varying in width from 2 to 4 inches, loaded eye to the sky.

Four painted steel coils.

This are boxes of furniture and cabinets for a new Hampton Inn. The boxes didn't look this good after I got done strapping them in place. Crushed most of them and I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't delivering the boxes, just had to not damage the stuff inside. When I delivered them, the contractor dropped one of the boxes off the forklift. He didn't bat an eye, and scooped up the box and put in into the motel.

And finally, a couple of injection molding machines. Delivered these to a plant that makes plastic interior components for Nissan.

The company that I work for also owns a production company. Here is the last load I picked up with the flatbed before I switched trailers for a couple of weeks. I will start another thread with those pics.

Find the new thread "A break from flatbed" for the continued story.

Check out Kevin Rutherford's Audio Road webpages. While most of the podcasts are more related to O/O's, the do provide valuable information if you like to learn how to operate your truck more efficiently and learn why and when freight seems to go up and down Trucking 101 is aimed at truckers in their first year.

Well, my calculate says that $0.365 + $0.08 = $0.445. Prime is not lying to you, per diem is part of your cpm pay.

The deadhead definitely depends on the account you are with. Started OTR dry van with Knight and the deadheads were as short as they could keep them. When I switched to the SAPA dedicated account, I had deadheads as long as 1200 miles. The shipper needed the empty trailers back to cover outbound loads and the load planners were unable to find back hauls that would get us back in time. I am sure the contract covered these miles.

I currently work for a much smaller company and get paid percentage of load and nothing for empty miles. While the load planners are looking for the shortest deadhead, the length of deadhead will vary depending on where we emptied. Loads to Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas usually result in the longest deadheads. I was paid for a deadhead to the next shipper one time when they needed a truck to meet their shipping time for inventory ($200 to go from Nashville over to Knoxville).