Flatbed dispatch service for open-deck carriers
Steel, lumber, pipe and machinery. Open-deck freight pays for the skill involved in securing it — and the securement rules are the part of the job a dispatcher has to understand before booking the load.
Open-deck freight is skilled work, and the rate should reflect it
Flatbed pays a premium over dry van on most lanes because not every driver can do it. Loads have to be secured to the federal cargo securement rules, tarped in weather, and often loaded by a crane or a forklift operator who has never seen your trailer before. That work takes time, and it is time that should be priced into the load rather than absorbed.
The securement standard is not a guideline. Aggregate working load limit has to be at least half the cargo weight, there are minimum tiedown counts based on length and weight, and there are commodity-specific rules for coils, lumber, pipe, concrete and crushed vehicles. An inspector will count your straps.
Oversize is where flatbed dispatching gets genuinely technical. Once a load exceeds the legal envelope, every state it crosses wants its own permit, and some want escorts, curfews or a defined route. A dispatcher who books an oversize load without working out the permit cost and the routing has handed you a problem, not a load.
BSG Carriers is a dispatch service, not a freight broker. You keep your own authority, your own insurance and your own carrier packet — the loads are booked under your MC, and you are paid by the broker or shipper directly.
What we do on every load
Load sourcing
Boards, direct broker relationships and repeat lanes — worked continuously, not only when the truck is empty.
Rate negotiation
Every load is negotiated. We know what a lane paid last week, and we do not take the first number on the board.
Paperwork
Carrier packets, rate confirmations, BOLs, lumper receipts and the invoice packet your factoring company needs.
Detention and TONU
If you sit, we document it and bill it. Detention that nobody claims is the most commonly abandoned money in trucking.
The legal envelope
Beyond these, you are into permits — and permits are per state, not per trip. Figures are the federal baseline; individual states differ.
How we run your flatbed
What it costs
Dispatching is charged as a percentage of the linehaul, agreed before you take your first load, and there is no long-term contract to sign. Ask a dispatcher for the current rate.
Tarp pay, permit costs and escort fees are negotiated into the rate as separate line items rather than buried in a per-mile number, so you can see what you are actually being paid for the work.
Where flatbed loads come from
Open-deck freight comes from industry rather than retail, and that changes its rhythm completely. Steel service centres, lumber yards, pipe and tube distributors, concrete and precast, roofing and building products, agricultural and construction machinery. These shippers move to the same customers continuously, which is why flatbed lanes repeat more naturally than dry van ones.
Construction season drives much of it. The northern half of the country builds hard from spring to late autumn and slows when the ground freezes, while the south and south-west run far more evenly. Carriers who work the seasonal markets in summer and reposition south for winter are following the freight rather than chasing it.
The useful thing about industrial freight is that it is harder to cover. A shipper who needs a flatbed with enough straps, the right chains, a working tarp set and a driver who knows how to secure a coil has fewer options than one shipping palletised goods — and they know it. Competence is leverage in this market in a way it simply is not in dry van.
What a flatbed rate has to cover
Open deck prices above dry van, and the premium is earned rather than given.
- The securement itself: straps, chains, binders, edge protection and corner boards wear out and are replaced out of the rate.
- Tarping is physical, weather-dependent and slow. It should be a separate negotiated line, not folded silently into the linehaul.
- Loading and unloading frequently involve you. Flatbed drivers are rarely spectators the way a drop-and-hook van driver is.
- Permits, escorts and route restrictions on anything oversize, which are costs and also hours.
- Weather risk. A tarped load in winter takes longer and is harder, and there is no line item for that — it is priced into whether you take the work at all.
- As everywhere on this site, there is no average rate printed here. Judge an offer against your own cost per mile, with the tarping time counted as hours rather than as goodwill.
Securement: the rules, and the number that matters
FMCSA cargo securement is 49 CFR 393.100-136. The summary below is for planning — the regulation itself is the authority, and commodity-specific rules apply to coils, logs, pipe, concrete and machinery.
- Aggregate working load limit: the combined WLL of your tiedowns must be at least half the weight of the cargo being secured. WLL is marked on the strap or chain and is not the same as breaking strength.
- Minimum tiedowns by article length: one for an article 5 ft or shorter weighing 1,100 lb or less; two if it is 5 ft or shorter but heavier than 1,100 lb, or if it is over 5 ft and up to 10 ft regardless of weight; then one more for every additional 10 ft or part thereof.
- Those are minimums, not targets. More is routinely required by the commodity rules and by common sense on a load that can shift.
- Edge protection wherever a tiedown passes over an edge that could cut or abrade it.
- Inspect within the first 50 miles and re-check at every change of duty status or every 3 hours or 150 miles, whichever comes first.
- Commodity-specific rules override the general ones. Steel coils, logs, pipe, concrete and heavy machinery each have their own requirements, and the coil rules in particular are where carriers get caught out.
The legal envelope, and when you need a permit
Standard limits are federal and interstate; states differ, and the permit is always issued by the state. Verify the route rather than the rule of thumb.
- Legal width is generally 8 ft 6 in. Anything wider is oversize and needs a permit for every state on the route.
- Legal height is commonly 13 ft 6 in, but it is set by the state rather than federally and is 14 ft in parts of the west. The load plus the deck height is what counts.
- Gross combination weight on the Interstate System is 80,000 lb without a permit, with 34,000 lb on a tandem.
- A step deck lowers the deck height, which is how a load too tall for a flat becomes legal without a permit. That is the main reason to own one.
- An RGN — removable gooseneck — drops lower still and lets machinery be driven on, which is a different market again, usually heavy haul with escorts and routed permits.
- Permits take time and cost money, and both belong in the rate before you accept rather than after.
Flatbed against step deck, RGN and dry van
A standard 48 or 53 ft flat handles most industrial freight and is the easiest open deck to keep loaded. A step deck opens up taller freight without permits and costs you a little versatility on flat loads. An RGN is a heavy-haul tool: higher rates, far fewer loads, permits and escorts as routine.
Against dry van, flatbed pays better and asks for skill, equipment and physical work in return. The freight is also less exposed to the retail cycle, which cuts both ways — it does not collapse after Christmas, and it does not boom before it either.
Most carriers who move to open deck and stay there do so because the work suits them and the shippers value competence. That is a better reason than the rate, and a more durable one.
Where to go next
Questions carriers ask
Put your truck to work
Send your MC and DOT numbers and a dispatcher will call you within one business day.