Flatbed truck questions

1

Will be purchasing another vehicle soon.

Know very little about trucks, and as we’ve been small time with pwing I don’t know whats best

Flatbed truck

Best length and width?

250, 350 etc?

Thanks in advance

2

depends on what your carrying?
how many gallons of water?
it will be easier to find a dually 350 flatbed than a SRW 250… not many out there. 350 flatbeds are a dime a dozen.

3

depends on what your carrying?
how many gallons of water?
it will be easier to find a dually 350 flatbed than a SRW 250… not many out there. 350 flatbeds are a dime a dozen.

4

I had five flatbed trucks. I recently switched to 3/4 ton trucks pulling trailers. It all depends on your business model. I am not saying anything against flatbed trucks I used them for 3 years. But with my business model, which is primarily flatwork both residential and commercial, these were the problems with flatbed trucks:

  1. Getting into parking garages. (both my Isuzu NPRs and basically 3 out of 5 of my trucks would not fit into parking garages)
  2. When your truck breaks down so does your equipment.
  3. Climbing up on my flatbed to grab things. (my employees gripe more than mine but slows down things which is money)
  4. Employees driving like a bat out of hell. (happens w trailers too, but generally people go slower w trailer attached)
  5. Registration fees. (most flatbeds are expensive registration fees because of weight limits)
  6. AAA will not tow flatbeds, and towing companies in general are hard to find for flatbeds and VERY expensive
  7. Its hard to find a good priced flatbed verses a good 3/4 ton work truck. Flatbeds in Arizona are hard to come by, and when you do find them they are much more expensive. I could buy 2 regular trucks for the same price in better condition and fewer miles.

Those are my negatives to a flat bed. There are a bunch of positives, but when I weighed the negatives to positives, trucks with trailers made more sense for my business model. I basically save money with trailers and 3/4 tons.

Hopefully I provided some type of help.

Good Luck!

5

Ty brings up some well thought out points. It makes sense why he went the way he did.
As for us the Flatbed is king. The guys take it to almost all of our jobs. The F-250 pickup is used as well.

Our Flatbed is a 99 Ford F-550 with my favorite engine the 7.3L power stroke diesel engine. Everything on this truck is low profile so it fits into most garages we do. It has an 8’x14’ aluminum flatbed on it. This truck is also great to go out at night to knock down commercial work because it can hold almost a 1000 gallons of water if needed at the job site.

The Flatbed for us was one of the best things I bought for my business.

6

It all depends on your business model. We have an 03 isuzu npr with a 8x16 bed and it works great for us. The few garages we do have here and actually clean have more than enough clearance for our truck.

With that said, it just depends what will work best for you and your business.