Do you have flatbed experience? Like car hauling,flatbeds are a unique challenge as well.It isn't just throwing a few chains and hitting the road. As mentioned earlier you might want to work for a company for awhile and get your experience and then go out on your own.

 

Pepe, it isn't difficult to make changes to your authority or insurance. You will probably need to up your coverage to haul cars. The down side to the insurance is that not all insurance companies write car haulers and premiums will be higher than vans or flats. These two factors are not everything which should be considered when switching to hauling cars. Most brokers who deal with cars don't deal with other types of freight. So you will need to establish new relationships. There is considerably more involved in hauling cars. You will need to use 4 chains or straps per vehicle. If you have a 10 car rig, you will need to use 40 chains to secure your load. Most flat bed loads can be secured with about 10 straps or chains. It is easy to damage a vehicle. You need to make sure to keep your height down to avoid hitting bridges, etc., It takes time to learn how and where to position your load to be legal. It can be a challenge to squeeze between the door and car to enter or exit the vehicle, while avoiding any damage to the door. There are several segments to car hauling. Auctions, new cars and POV's are the primary areas. POV's are personal vehicles. These can pay more, but you will always be picking up and delivering. Auctions and new vehicles you normally have a full load. Car haulers tend to do more deadheading since you can only haul vehicles. When I hauled cars, it wasn't uncommon to deadhead several hundred miles to pick up the next load. That wasn't always the case, but it was a part of the business.

Car hauler trailers are usually more expensive than vans. There is also more maintenance involved. Most ramps operate off of hydraulics and hoses can and do burst.

There is more van freight, but rates are usually lower, too. There is good paying van freight, but it takes time to find it. If you want to make the higher dollars, you cannot always take the first load offered. You can make good money in most any aspect of this industry. You need to know your business and where the good and bad areas are for your particular type of freight.

 

If Porkchop is really interested in jumping straight into hauling cars, I would suggest leasing into either The Waggoners Trucking, or United Road. Both have a solid cutomer base, both are predominantly O/O compnaies, and both provide training. Do that for a year or two, then decide if going solo is the right thing to do.

 

Oh crap!!

 

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

I dont pretend to know anything about car hauling....but, it seems to me they would be like any other trailer in this business, bigger the better. More cars = more money.....no?

 

If you haven't hauled cars before and just decided to because one of your friends told you it's "good money" you're in for a reality check. I hauled cars for my buddy a year before I bought my own trucks. Let me tell ya, learning to load that trailer the first 3 months was WAY!!! harder than learning how to drive the truck itself. Like GMAN said learning how to position the cars not to over load the axles, height, fitting the cars on the trailer, driving them on and chaining takes experience. Not counting these asshole customers who look over their piece of sh*t '84 porsche for every little nick and scratch they could find that wasn't noted on the inspection report just so they can get a free paint job. Those 6-7 car "easy/quick" load trailers that you are talking about aren't easy to load when you are new... My advice if you want to haul cars, definately go to work for someone else first to gain experience.

 

For long distance car hauling I would recomend you a at least 8 car
trailer your expenses are going to be the same hauling six cars or eight,
I see you live in Virgina, your best bet is haul cars down South to Texas
to the border with Mexico, actually there are a lot of people from Mexico
and South Texas buying used car to export to Mexico, you can see them
all the time towing the cars in the road, they pay $600 per car or $4800
per an 8 car full triler, you can do 1 trip per week and they rarely request cargo insurance hauling 8 cars with a class 8 truck is like running
almost empty,well good luck, just my 2 cents

 

You are required to have cargo insurance to have motor carrier authority. Most auctions and shippers require cargo insurance, anyway. If you have 8 cars on a trailer, you will know you have a load on the trailer. An 8 or 9 car trailer should weigh about 25,000 without anything on it. Car haulers are heavy. In addition, there is a lot of wind resistance with a load of vehicles.

 

When my mother would go down to Florida for the winter you couldn't get a car carrier if your life depended on it unless you booked one at least a year in advance. The cost from Leominster Mass to Daytona Florida was $700 per car. It's 1200 miles. The only problem was that they would try and load them up with all there stuff even though they were told they couldn't so it was a huge pain in the ass getting them to unload there trunks before leaving.

You also got the return business. The driver that I talked to said he names the date when they leave and when they return. I guess with older retired people, they can do without there cars for long periods of time anyways if the car carriers schedule doesn't match theirs.