Whats the ideal sized van

[ATCO]

Whats the ideal sized van for running your own LTL?

Are you more likelly to cube out vs. gross out?

I figure it's the later... if at all...

[Big_Dave]

Joe, I do a lot of LTL and pull 48' and 53' vans.

Both size vans that I pull have the 'E-Track' logistics posts in them every 2' or so.

Rarely do I find myself loaded to over 65K lbs.

Of the times I do, it's usually a truckload (return home load) or I'm hauling booze outbound.

If you're gonna do a lot of inner city type or residential work, I'd go with a 48' or maybe even down to a 45'.

[ATCO]

Dave, I have a 77' trailmobile in great shape... I planned to refurbish it, get rid of the daytons and run it.. it's 45' x 96" w/swing doors (which need replacement)... It's here and avaialble to me... Some of this freight I'm looking at can be truckload, and I don't want to show up with too short a trailer... but for LTL, this is what I think I'd choose. Saia is running long vans, and keeps their P & D drivers from having to keep running back to the terminal... THey are running mostly 48' and 53' and their drivers are still making the runs, might be a little harder, but it sounds like Saia thinks it saves time in the long run...

I don't really want to mess with pups, so it sounds like I'll run the 45' and aquire a 53x120 later...

[K C Brau]

There is no one size fits all for this question. It depends on the freight you are going to be hauling, and the customer requirements and facilities. If you find you often cube out with what you have, naturally you will need to look for a trailer with more cube. If the customer has overhang on the pallets, there may be problems with side-by-side loading in your 96" width trailer. But, if you get to gross without these things being an issue, what you have is great. A select few companies have even tried 12' 6" high trailers to reduce wind drag, because the extra room on top just wasn't needed.

[Uturn2001]

While I ran primarily truckload freight, more and more places I ran into would only load 53 foot vans, even if they only loaded to the 30 or 40 foot mark.