Blog - Great Western Transporation

Tightening Truck Capacity

As tight as capacity has been over the last 60 days, it will grow even tighter over the next six months with the up turn in the economy and the normal seasonal surge of freight movement. Simply put, there is not enough trucks nationwide to cover the freight available.

The shortage of drivers, coupled with the surge in our economy, has further heightened the capacity issue. While some regional and national Less- Than-Truckload (LTL) carriers have been overburdened because of the loss of competitors and capacity to business failures, it is primarily truckload carriers that have been forced to turn away business due to lack of personnel and equipment.

The best means to secure trucks is with as much advance notice as possible for both Truckload and LTL shipments. Better pricing and availability can be achieved through greater lead-time. Truckload availability seems to be much better on Mondays and Tuesdays and it would be to your advantage to plan shipping of your truckloads for those days.

If we at Great Western Transportation may answer any questions or assist you in any manner, please do not hesitate in contacting us at your earliest convenience.

May 3, 2011 | Tags: ltl, truck capacity, truckload | Category: General

What Flatbed Trucking Can Do For You

Great Western Transportation offers many services with one of our premier specialties being Flatbed Trucking. Flatbeds are trailers with no walls and are ideal for unloading and loading when there is no dock or when the product won’t quite fit in the confines of a dry van.

Flatbeds are very commonly used when moving construction equipment because often the location of the equipment is at constructions sites that don’t have access to docks and need the ability to load from the side with either a crane or forklift. Although construction equipment is very commonly associated with flatbed trucks, there are many other types of products that commonly move on flatbeds like pipe and steel with options to tarp the product so it is protected from the weather.

There a few different types of trailers in the category of flatbeds that offer abilities to fit different needs like easier loading and offloading and more room to fit items so that they better fit the dimensions required by law without requiring permits. Common types of flatbed trailers are the regular straight flatbed which is usually 5 feet high and the step deck which is a trailer that attached to the hitch of the truck but then dips down to about 3 feet high allowing you to fit items that are larger in height.

A good example to illustrate how the different flatbed trailers can suit different needs would be moving a piece of machinery that is 10 feet high. With a regular flatbed the highest you can generally go is 8’6” but if you use a stepdeck you can generally go up to 10’6” and still be within the dimensions set by the Department of Transportation.

At Great Western Transportation we have experienced professionals who know exactly what type of trailer you need based on the type of product and its dimensions. Feel free to visit our Flatbed Trucking page or give us a call if you have any questions we may assist you with.

May 3, 2011 | | Category: Flatbed

What Is Heavy Haul Trucking?

Heavy Haul Trucking Crane

Over-dimensional / Overweight shipments, also known as Heavy Haul shipments, pose special challenges for shippers. Often times a shipment is both over-dimensional as well as overweight in nature and therefore may require special routings in order to travel only on the highways that permit vehicle weights that can accommodate them in the Continental United States, Canada, and Mexico. The most common types of heavy haul shipments are large pieces of machinery for construction such as excavators and dump trucks.

Heavy Haul shipments frequently require special trucks and trailers that can carry the size of what you’re shipping. They may also require the purchase of special permits issued by the various governmental agencies, States, and municipalities through which your shipment will travel.

Some pictures of what heavy haul trucking looks like are below:

Black heavy haul truck Yellow Heavy Haul Truck

Visit Great Western Transportation page for more information and a rate quote.

May 2, 2011 | | Category: Heavy Haul

10,000 Containers Lost…at Sea.

Slashdot reports of a interesting article at Singularity Hub about how 10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea each year;

“Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year. This month the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container that was lost in the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004. What’s happened to the sunken shipment in the past seven years? It’s become a warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor, providing a new habitat for species that might otherwise not be attracted to the area.”

From the comments at Slashdot it sounds as if cargo ships often purposely dump containers to help stabilize the boat and do so quite often. Further, according to commentators, the companies that ship their products from overseas are so large scale and ship in such large quantities that it’s to be expected to lose a few containers and don’t actively investigate. It doesn’t sound far fetched at all considering the size of these container ships and amount things get “lost” in transit anyways.

If we at Great Western Transportation were ever to lose your container on one of our Heavy Haul Trucking trailers we would never hear the end of it!

May 1, 2011 | | Category: General