Another disadvantage of this extended pick up and delivery times is that the more time you spent loading and delivering trucks the less time you are driving. If the driver is paid by the mile driven then there is a chance that you can very quickly have an unhappy driver and you can even face that drivers will quickly leave your company.
Have this things in mind in advance and create action plan for this situations. Reward them or create some sort of combination that they are paid for delivery and pickup plus the mile they drive. This won’t cost you a lot of money but will ensure you have a satisfied and long term drivers.
7. You Need To Check Load More Often
Once you finally managed to onboard that load and set yourself on track and finally you hit the road there is also a thing that you will need to pull over more often just to check that everything is OK with the load. Just to make sure that belts are OK and that everything is in the place as it should be.
Source: www.etcinternational.com
This kind of small checks are not talking a lot time but still you can lose a few minutes here and a few minutes there and total time required to make sure everything is fine accumulates to half an hour. Half an hour of checking if the load is OK is 30 miles wasted if you were driving. Have this fact in mind too when negotiating the flatbed load price.
8. Flatbed Load Require More Time to Secure and Fix
And that is another fact to have in mind. Pickup time is not just the time required to onboard the goods on the trailer. After you pick them up you need to invest a lot of time and effort to make sure everything is secured and fixed to the trailer according to FMCSA safety regulations. If you miss to do even a one small thing you could face a potential damage to the goods you are carrying.
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Perform minimum double check or even triple checks to ensure everything is done the way it is supposed to do. Some trucking companies operating in team have a practice that first one driver is double checking the load and then the second one comes and does the same double checking. This way the possibility for mistake is taken to a minimum.
9. You Need to Buy Additional Flatbed Trailer Equipment
Extra cost you need to handle is buying additional or extra equipment you need to be able to carry the loads across the country. Getting load from east cost to west coast and vice versa makes it exposed to all kind of different weather occasions and to make sure everything gets to the delivery place in one piece and operating like it was when you picked it up you need equipment to protect the loads like tarpaulin.
