Know your freight. Know your invoice.
The trailers we source and move, the modes we refuse on purpose, and the charges and terms that quietly decide what you pay. We run the right equipment for your freight and put the vocabulary on the table — so you read the rate, not a black box. No hidden fees, fewer touches, less damage.
The right trailer for the freight. Every time.
From a hotshot under the dock to a multi-axle heavy haul under a permit, here is the equipment we source and move — what each one is built for, the freight it fits, and the typical specs to size your load against. Match the trailer to the freight and the rate, the transit, and the damage risk all fall into line. Dry van, reefer, flatbed, and step deck quote instantly online. The rest — hotshot, box truck, RGN, heavy haul, sprinter, expedited, and partials — are specialist moves: tell us about the load and we'll come back with a rate.
Dry Van
An enclosed, weatherproof trailer for non-perishable, palletized, or floor-loaded freight. The default for most general full-truckload moves.
Best for: Packaged consumer goods, retail and CPG, paper, electronics, non-perishable food, and most palletized dry freight.
- Deck / length
- 48 or 53 ft enclosed
- Max payload
- up to ~42,000–45,000 lb
- Capacity
- up to 26 pallets (53 ft)
- Note
- Weather-protected; no temp control
Reefer (Refrigerated)
An insulated trailer with an onboard refrigeration unit that holds a set temperature in transit. Built for perishables and anything that can't break the cold chain.
Best for: Produce, meat and seafood, dairy, frozen goods, pharmaceuticals, and other temperature-sensitive freight.
- Deck / length
- 48 or 53 ft insulated
- Max payload
- ~42,000–44,000 lb
- Temp range
- roughly -20°F to 70°F
- Note
- Continuous temp control
Flatbed
An open trailer with no walls or roof, allowing top, side, and rear loading by crane or forklift. The standard for oversized, heavy, or awkward freight that won't fit in a van.
Best for: Steel, lumber, building materials, machinery, pipe, and palletized freight loaded by forklift or crane.
- Deck / length
- 48–53 ft open deck
- Max payload
- up to ~46,000–48,000 lb
- Deck height
- ~60 in; legal width 8.5 ft
- Note
- Strapped/chained; tarps on request
Step Deck (Drop Deck)
A flatbed with a dropped lower deck, giving more vertical clearance than a standard flatbed without needing permits. Handles taller freight that would exceed legal height on a high deck.
Best for: Tall machinery, equipment, and oversized freight that exceeds standard flatbed height limits.
- Deck / length
- ~37–43 ft lower + upper deck
- Max payload
- up to ~44,000–48,000 lb
- Deck height
- lower deck ~38–42 in
- Note
- Freight up to ~10 ft, no permits
Hotshot
A Class 3–5 medium-duty truck pulling a flatbed gooseneck or bumper-pull trailer, ideal for time-sensitive freight too small for a full tractor-trailer. Quick to dispatch and often dedicated to a single load.
Best for: Urgent or smaller flatbed freight, single-pallet to half-deck loads, equipment parts, and expedited LTL-sized shipments.
- Deck / length
- 30–40 ft gooseneck flatbed
- Max payload
- up to ~16,500 lb
- Capacity
- open deck, top/side/rear load
- Note
- Often dedicated and expedited
Box Truck (Straight Truck)
A single-unit straight truck with an enclosed cargo box on the same chassis as the cab. Maneuverable for urban and tight-dock deliveries, often equipped with a liftgate for no-dock locations.
Best for: Local and regional deliveries, smaller LTL-style loads, residential and limited-access stops, and last-mile freight.
- Deck / length
- 16–26 ft box
- Max payload
- ~8,000–12,000 lb
- Capacity
- ~6–12 pallets (up to ~14 in 26 ft)
- Note
- Liftgate available
RGN (Removable Gooseneck)
A multi-axle lowboy trailer whose gooseneck detaches to create a front ramp, letting wheeled and tracked equipment drive directly onto a very low deck. Built for tall, heavy, drivable machinery.
Best for: Construction and heavy equipment, excavators, dozers, cranes, and other tall or self-propelled machinery.
- Deck / length
- ~29 ft well; multi-axle
- Max payload
- ~40,000 to 150,000+ lb by axles
- Deck height
- well deck as low as ~18–24 in
- Note
- Permits/routing for over-dimensional
Heavy Haul
Specialized multi-axle and extendable trailer configurations for freight that exceeds legal weight or dimension limits. Moves are engineered with permits, routing, and escorts as needed.
Best for: Oversized industrial, energy, and infrastructure freight, transformers, large machinery, and structural components.
- Deck / length
- extendable / multi-axle
- Max payload
- 80,000 lb to several hundred thousand
- Permits
- state permits + approved routing
- Note
- May require pilot/escort vehicles
Sprinter / Cargo Van
A light cargo van for small, urgent shipments that don't justify a larger truck. Often runs direct, point-to-point with no terminal stops.
Best for: Small expedited freight, critical parts, documents, and time-sensitive shipments of a few pallets or less.
- Deck / length
- 10–14 ft cargo area
- Max payload
- up to ~3,000–4,000 lb
- Capacity
- roughly 1–4 pallets
- Note
- Direct, no terminal handling
Expedited
A service mode rather than a single trailer type, prioritizing speed with dedicated and often team-driven equipment that keeps moving with minimal stops. Matched to the right van, truck, or flatbed for the load.
Best for: Tight-deadline freight, production-down parts, and any shipment where transit time outweighs cost.
- Equipment
- sprinter, straight truck, or TT
- Service
- team drivers, coast-to-coast
- Dispatch
- rapid, often dedicated
- Note
- Priced for speed + direct routing
Partials (Partial Truckload / Volume)
A middle ground between LTL and full truckload for freight that fills part of a trailer. Pricing is based on space and weight used, often with fewer handoffs than terminal-based LTL.
Best for: Shipments of roughly 6–18 pallets or several thousand pounds that are too big for LTL but don't fill a full trailer.
- Typical size
- ~6–18 pallets / 5,000–20,000 lb
- Pricing
- by space + weight used
- Handling
- fewer touches than LTL
- Note
- Lower damage risk, no terminal shuffle
The modes we won't move, and the reason why.
Saying no is part of running the right equipment. Two freight types we deliberately leave to specialists — because forcing them into our model would cost you money, visibility, and product condition. This is a transparency call, not a capability gap.
Parcels / small-package
Parcels run on a different model. We move freight — palletized, skidded, and full-load shipments matched to the right trailer — not envelopes and individual boxes through a small-package network. Routing your shipment through a parcel system means it gets handled like mail: sorted, scanned, and rerouted across hubs built for package volume, not for your freight. When a load belongs on a truck, we put it on a truck — tracked as one shipment, priced as one move, handled as little as possible.
Big-box carrier LTL
Traditional hub-and-spoke LTL from the mega carriers means your freight can be touched at several terminals on its way through — loaded, unloaded, and transferred along the line. More handling raises the risk of damage. It can also mean surprise fees: NMFC reclassification and density re-rates can change your price after pickup, and accessorial creep — liftgate, residential, reweigh, inspection — stacks charges you never quoted. Once your pallet enters that network, clean visibility gets harder to hold. We don’t accept that trade for you.
For mid-size loads that don’t fill a trailer, we run partials and shared-truckload freight instead — your shipment stays on one truck and skips the terminal shuffle. Fewer touches, fewer surprise fees, less damage.
The line items that move your final number.
The linehaul is only the start. Fuel, detention, layover, and a stack of accessorials are where an invoice quietly grows — or where a less-transparent broker buries margin. Here is what each common charge is, when it typically applies, and why it shows up, so nothing on the bill is a surprise.
The base rate to move your freight from pickup to delivery — the core transportation charge before fuel and accessorials.
A separate line that moves with diesel prices, typically pegged to a published weekly fuel index so the rate tracks the market.
Charged when a driver waits past the free loading or unloading window — typically about 2 hours — then billed per hour for the delay.
Applies when a driver is held overnight or a full day because freight isn't ready or can't be received, covering the lost day.
A flat fee when a truck is booked and dispatched but the load is canceled, covering the carrier's committed but wasted capacity.
Pays third-party crews at a warehouse or DC to physically load or unload the trailer — common at grocery and retail docks.
Charged when the driver helps load or unload instead of staying hands-off — billed when no dock labor or lumper is provided.
A fee to dispatch a truck fitted with a hydraulic platform that raises and lowers freight when there is no loading dock.
Added for deliveries to homes or hard-to-reach sites — schools, farms, military bases, construction — that take extra time and equipment.
Charged when you change the delivery destination after a load is already in transit, redirecting the truck to a new address.
Applies when a first delivery attempt fails — receiver closed, no appointment, freight refused — and the carrier must return another day.
A per-stop fee for each additional pickup or drop beyond the first, covering the added miles and handling on a multi-stop run.
Covers the labor and materials to tarp open-deck freight for weather or load protection — heavier or taller loads cost more.
Covers state permits and, when required, pilot or escort vehicles for loads that exceed legal width, height, length, or weight.
Billed when freight sits in a warehouse or on a trailer beyond the agreed free period, usually charged per day until it moves.
The words on the rate con, in plain English.
Deadhead, drayage, detention, FTL, accessorial — the trade talks in shorthand, and the shorthand decides what you're quoted. Here are the terms you'll hear most, defined plainly, so you can read a quote and a status update the way an operator does.
Miles a truck runs empty, no paying freight aboard, between a delivery and the next pickup. It costs the carrier, so it often gets baked into your rate.
A short-haul move of a container between a port, rail ramp, or terminal and a nearby warehouse. Usually one leg of a longer intermodal trip.
A charge that accrues when a driver waits beyond the free time, commonly about two hours, to load or unload at a shipper or receiver.
Any add-on charge for a service beyond the base linehaul. Examples: liftgate, inside delivery, layover, limited-access, and detention.
The base origin-to-destination transportation charge, before fuel surcharge and accessorials are added.
A shipment that fills, or is priced as if it fills, an entire trailer and rides direct from origin to destination without sharing space.
Less-than-truckload: smaller shipments from multiple customers consolidated on one trailer, moving through terminal networks with multiple handlings.
Freight too large for economical LTL but short of a full trailer. Moved direct with minimal handling and priced for the space it occupies.
A load that fills a truck's return-direction trip, typically priced lower because it offsets miles that would otherwise run deadhead.
A recurring origin-to-destination route (e.g., Dallas to Atlanta). Pricing, capacity, and transit times are tracked per lane.
Freight that rides in the same container across two or more modes — typically rail for the long haul with truck drayage on each end.
A refrigerated trailer with its own temperature control, used to hold perishable or climate-sensitive freight within a set range in transit.
Heavy waterproof covers strapped over flatbed freight to shield it from weather and road debris. Tarping is labor-intensive and often a separate charge.
The classification system that assigns LTL freight a class (50–500) based on density, handling, stowability, and liability, which drives the rate.
Spot rates are one-off prices quoted on current market conditions. Contract rates are pre-negotiated for a lane over a set period.
The formal offer of a specific load to a carrier or broker at agreed terms, which they then accept or reject.
The document confirming the agreed price and load details — stops, dates, equipment, and terms — issued before a carrier picks up.
The shipment receipt and contract of carriage. It lists what is moving, who ships and receives it, and the terms.
The signed document confirming the consignee received the freight, used to close the load and support billing or claims.
A shipment where the shipper, receiver, or both are hidden from one another on the paperwork — common in drop-ship arrangements.
Unloading freight from one trailer and reloading it onto another with little or no storage between, to consolidate or reroute quickly.
Two drivers alternating behind the wheel so a truck can keep moving nearly around the clock, used for time-critical or long-haul freight.
Hazardous materials regulated for transport, requiring proper classification, placarding, paperwork, and specially endorsed drivers and carriers.
Price it. Watch the trail build.
You know the equipment, the charges, and the vocabulary. Put a dry van, reefer, flatbed, or step deck in and get a rate in seconds — or tell us about a specialist move and we'll come back with one. Sourced on the right trailer, every charge named, your rate shown on the record. No hidden fees, no black box, no freight handled twice.