Does flatbed pay more than dry van?

Open-deck rates are generally higher for the same lane, but the premium is compensating for real costs: securement equipment, tarps, longer loading times, tarping labour and greater inspection exposure. Whether it is worth it depends on your own cost per mile once those hours and that equipment are included.

How tall can a flatbed load be?

It depends on your state. Federal law sets width at 102 inches on the National Network but does not set a height limit; states do, most commonly at 13 feet 6 inches or 14 feet. Your usable freight height is the lowest limit on your route minus your own deck height.

Do I need a permit for an oversize flatbed load?

Yes, and from each state you travel through. There is no federal oversize permit. Each state sets its own fees, routes, travel hours and escort requirements.

What is the difference between a flatbed and a step deck?

A step deck has a raised front section and a lower main deck, which gives more usable freight height without needing an oversize permit. A flatbed is a single level deck.

Flatbed Freight: What Changes Compared With a Dry Van

Higher rates, more work, and a different relationship with enforcement. The move from dry van to flatbed is less about the trailer than about the fact that your load is visible, adjustable, and entirely your responsibility.

The one structural difference

In a dry van, the trailer contains the load. The doors close, the seal goes on, and in most cases the driver never touches the freight. Securement inside a van is largely the shipper's problem, and an inspector cannot see it.

On a flatbed, the securement is the trailer. Every strap, chain, corner protector and piece of dunnage is visible to every officer who passes you, and the rules in 49 CFR Part 393 Subpart I apply to what they can see. That single fact drives most of what is different: the pay, the workload, the risk, and the inspection exposure.

The trailers

Common open-deck equipment. Deck heights are typical rather than regulated.
Type	What it is	Why you would use it
Flatbed	A single flat deck, usually 48 or 53 feet	The default. Steel, lumber, machinery, building materials.
Step deck (drop deck)	A raised front section and a lower main deck	Taller freight. The lower deck buys you height without a permit.
Double drop / RGN	A well between the axle groups; the removable gooseneck detaches so equipment can drive on	Tall or self-propelled machinery.
Conestoga	A flatbed with a rolling tarp system on a frame	Freight that must stay dry but cannot be loaded through a van door.
Curtain side	A van body with fabric sides that open	Side loading with weather protection.

The step deck exists because of height, and height is where a lot of flatbed planning happens.

Height is a state question

Federal law sets vehicle width on the National Network at 102 inches, with a narrow exception for Hawaii. It does not set a height limit. Height is governed by state law, and most states settle on 13 feet 6 inches or 14 feet — but the limit that binds you is the lowest one on your route, not the average.

What that means in practice: your usable freight height is the state limit minus your deck height. A standard flatbed with a deck around five feet gives you roughly eight and a half feet of freight in a 13-foot-6 state. A step deck with a lower main deck gives you around ten. Those numbers depend on your specific trailer, its suspension setting and your tires, so measure yours rather than trusting a table.

Securement, and the arithmetic you need in your head

Two independent tests, both of which must pass.

Aggregate working load limit must be at least half the weight of the article or group of articles. A 20,000-pound coil needs 10,000 pounds of aggregate working load limit.
The minimum number of tiedowns depends on length and weight: two for an article over five feet, plus one more for every additional ten feet or fraction of it, if it is not blocked against forward movement.

The counting rule is where people go wrong. A strap anchored on one side of the trailer, over the load, and anchored on the other side counts for its full working load limit. A strap that comes back to an anchor point on the same side counts for half. And your tiedown's working load limit is the lowest rating in the whole assembly, including the ratchet and the anchor point — not the number printed on the webbing.

The full calculation, with the regulation text, is here. It is worth learning properly, because it is the difference between a load that looks secure and a load that is.

Tarping

Tarping is physical work at height in whatever weather is happening, and it is the single biggest injury source in open-deck trucking. It is also a meaningful cost that is often invisible in the rate discussion.

Three things to settle before you accept the load:

Is tarp pay separate? On many lanes it is a named accessorial on the rate confirmation. If it is not stated, it is not agreed. What to read on the rate confirmation is covered here.
Whose tarps? Yours, almost always. A set of steel tarps and lumber tarps is a real capital cost, they wear out, and they are stolen.
How long will it take? Tarping time is time you are not driving. It belongs in your cost per mile calculation like any other unpaid hour.

Weight, and why flatbed hits the scale differently

Dense freight on an open deck reaches legal weight long before it reaches the deck's capacity. Steel, in particular, is often a weight load rather than a space load, which means axle distribution becomes a daily calculation rather than an occasional one.

The load is placed where the shipper's crane put it, and moving it is not a matter of sliding a tandem. Getting the placement right at the shipper — before the straps go on — is the whole game. Federal weight limits and the bridge formula are set out here.

Oversize and overweight

A great deal of open-deck freight is legal. A meaningful share is not, and that share pays better.

Permits are issued by each state, for travel on that state's roads. There is no federal oversize permit. A multi-state oversize move therefore means a separate permit from every state on the route, each with its own fee, route restrictions, travel hours and escort requirements. Some states restrict oversize movement at night, on weekends or during holidays.

Entering this deliberately means either learning each state's system for the lanes you run, or using a permit service and pricing their fee into the load. Entering it accidentally — discovering at the shipper that the load is nine inches wider than agreed — means a load you cannot legally move.

What the rate has to cover that a van rate does not

Straps, chains, binders, corner protectors, edge protectors and dunnage, all of which wear out and get damaged.
Tarps, which are expensive and have a finite life.
Loading and unloading time that is frequently longer, because cranes and forklifts and placement decisions are involved.
Tarping and untarping labour.
A higher likelihood of being inspected, because your securement is visible.
More physical wear on you, which is not a line item until it is.

Open-deck rates are typically higher than van rates for the same lane, and the reason is all of the above. Whether the premium is worth it is an arithmetic question, not a preference question: put the real hours and the real equipment cost into your cost per mile and compare.

Getting started without a flatbed background

The honest warning: securement is a skill, and the failure mode is that something comes off the trailer on an interstate. Learning it from videos is not the same as learning it from someone who has done it.

Two routes people actually take. Run for a carrier that hauls open deck first, and learn on their equipment and their insurance. Or start with straightforward, uniform freight — palletised building materials, banded lumber — and move towards machinery and coils as you build the judgement. Steel coils and paper rolls have their own specific sections in the regulation for a reason, and they are not where you begin.

Flatbed Freight: What Actually Changes