Flatbed Delivery

Hey guys! So I'll start this off with some good news. Today I passed my "written" exams and got my permit! It was a little nerve racking but with the help of the High Road Test prep and other study aids I passed and that's all that matters now.

Now to my question: Where do flatbeds deliver to mostly? Factories? Lumber yards? Warehouses? I've got a general idea but I was just wondering what type of deliveries I should plan on making.

Thanks guys!

Now to my question: Where do flatbeds deliver to mostly? Factories? Lumber yards? Warehouses? I've got a general idea but I was just wondering what type of deliveries I should plan on making.

I am in a regional fleet that only runs the great lakes area and I have made pick ups and deliveries at all of those kinds of places.

In the few months I've been doing flatbed, I've been to different kinds of factories and warehouses and yards, some in the middle of cities, some in pretty remote places. I've also been to some small plumbing and building materials supply places, a rock quarry, a small town water treatment plant, and a trip down some very narrow side streets to deliver structural steel for a new building at a very nice house. The variety of places is one of the things I like about it.

J.K., congratulations on that permit!

Where do flatbeds deliver to mostly? Factories? Lumber yards? Warehouses? I've got a general idea but I was just wondering what type of deliveries I should plan on making.

You pretty much answered your own question. You are going to go to all those types of places. One of the benefits of flat-bedding is that you don't have to sit at a large seemingly unorganized distribution center waiting on someone to figure out which of the hundreds of doors you are at. Much of the time you will pull into a parking lot, get your tarps and straps off and there will be a fork-lift operator waiting there to unload you. Like this:

Sometimes you will pull into or back into a large warehouse where they will have large overhead cranes to unload you such as this:

You may end up at some construction sites and get unloaded with whatever equipment is available on the job site:

There are even going to be times where you will have to make sure you are on time to your delivery location because someone has paid for a large crane to be there to unload you at a certain time, like this:

Old School hit this one on the head.... BUT he forgot the job sites that do not have the proper equipment to lift what you are delivering. That is always fun. I was delivering some manholes to a job site last week and the supervisor was telling his loader operator (forks on the loader) that he would have to scoop the manholes off the deck of the trailer. What this entails is forcing the forks between the bed of the trailer and the manholes. Mind you, these manholes ranged in weight between 5k and 10k each. I said the He!! you are. He then stated that we should have put dunnage under them and I told him that this is how they are delivered and they were supposed to have the proper equipment to lift them from the lifting points... Well I just happened to have a set of 4 way picking chains in the trailer. You have to watch what the operators are doing or you will end up with damage to your trailer if they follow the advice of their superiors.

You are the captain of your ship and you have to protect it.

I forgot, sometimes the job site is ... Go to the top of Lolo pass and turn on the gravel road on the right. Then drop the excavator 7 miles down that road. Almost lost the trailer 2 times on that one but at 6 miles there was a large road junction... Dropped the excavator there and they had to road it the last mile.