Dry Van Loads
Rates Visible Before You Call

Weight out or cube out

Every dry van load fails one of two ways: it runs out of weight or it runs out of space. A trailer of bottled drinks weighs out at half the trailer; a trailer of empty packaging cubes out at a fraction of the legal payload. Knowing which one you are looking at before you accept is most of what experience buys in this segment.

The limits are fixed and worth memorising: 80,000 lb gross on the Interstate system, 20,000 lb on a single axle, 34,000 lb on a tandem, and the federal bridge formula governing how those axles are spaced. Subtract a tractor and trailer and you are left with roughly 44,000 to 45,000 lb of payload. Anything heavier than that is not a dry van load, however well it fits.

Drop and hook against live load

This distinction is worth more to a dry van operator than a few cents per mile. A drop-and-hook load means the trailer is already loaded and sealed, you swap trailers and leave, often in under half an hour. A live load means you back into a door and wait while the freight is put on, and the wait is unpaid until free time expires.

Two loads at the same rate per mile are not the same load if one of them takes four hours at the dock. Read the posting for which it is, get the free time and detention rate in writing, and treat detention as revenue you have to actively claim rather than something that arrives on its own.

What detention and layover should be paying, and how to actually collect it, is set out in detention and layover pay.

What moves in a dry van

• Packaged consumer goods, groceries that do not need temperature control, and household products.
• Retail and e-commerce inventory into distribution centres.
• Paper, packaging and printed material.
• Building products and hardware that do not need an open deck.
• Auto parts and industrial components, palletised or racked.
• Non-perishable beverages, the classic weight-out freight.

Because the pool is so large, dry van is also the most competitive segment to sell into. Rates move with the freight cycle faster than anywhere else, and the operators who do well are the ones who know their own cost per mile precisely enough to say no.

Getting the most out of the board

Set your equipment to dry van and add the states you actually run. From there the board only shows freight your trailer can take on lanes you want, with the rate on each posting, so the comparison you are making is between real numbers rather than between a number and a phone call. When you deliver, look for the return before you unload rather than after.

The reasoning behind that last point, and how much an empty leg really costs, is in deadhead: finding a backhaul before you unload.

Every dry van load on this board shows its rate before you call, and posting is free for brokers and shippers, which is why the freight is here. See how it works for carriers.