Flatbed Variety

I was talking to A.R.S. ( Andy-Rob-Skipper) yesterday about tapping loads, and how often. He told me he tarps about 75% of the time.

In my time driving, my career average has remained 0.00% tarping. Hopefully it will remain steady. My hat is off to those of you that are required to tarp and remove those load tarps. Be safe.

Cool! What cool photos, thanks guys! I saw a lot of flatbeds in wall work, but so that I was never fully loaded at work (I looked at all the pictures for two hours, it was very interesting to find out. A good profession, difficult, responsible and not for the weak to carry such goods even practically crawling on the asphalt!!! Thanks a lot!!!

Thought I’d post these photos and ask the flatbedders what the heck is going on here? Why are the back axle tires so small? And it’s up in there air guessing it’s a lift axle of sorts? And it’s hard to tell but the fifth wheel was not a normal one. Slanted downward. First time I’ve seen any kind of setup like this. He was delivering a huge refrigeration unit.

Thought I’d post these photos and ask the flatbedders what the heck is going on here? Why are the back axle tires so small? And it’s up in there air guessing it’s a lift axle of sorts? And it’s hard to tell but the fifth wheel was not a normal one. Slanted downward. First time I’ve seen any kind of setup like this. He was delivering a huge refrigeration unit.

I don’t think the photos posted but based on your description, the unit coming off the 5th wheel is called a Jeep. It helps distribute weight by adding another steerable section and extra axles to help spread the weight. The smaller tires can serve a few functions. One is that it gets the load lower so that more travel routes are available and potentially fewer permit restrictions on height. A popular west cost trailer is made by a company called Cozad, they use the low pro tires in conjunction with an angled dovetail on the rear of the trailer allowing equipment to be loaded over the back, saving time.

There we go. They’re running a lift axle with 19.5 tires to get it off the ground without giving away clearance with the top deck of the trailer. It helps save on tires when empty and gives a little better fuel economy due to less rolling resistance. The trade off is only one drive axle.

^^^^^^ I LOVE YOU GUYS! I've learned SOOOOO much from this thread.

Thank you.

~ Anne ~

^^^^^^ I LOVE YOU GUYS! I've learned SOOOOO much from this thread.

Thank you.

~ Anne ~

You’re welcome :)

I’m not a big contributor but try to do what I can when I can. My heavy haul truck had an extra push axle on it and 2 of the 3 on the trailer would lift along with the additional flip. I’m not doing that anymore, took a regional position pulling hopper bottom that gets me home much more frequently and pays what I was making doing the heavy lifting.

Copper out of Arizona

Copper out of Arizona