Reefer, Dry Van or Flatbed: Choosing a Trailer
Most freight fits more than one trailer, and the wrong choice fails quietly. How an asset carrier decides between reefer, dry van and flatbed.
Most freight fits more than one trailer type, and the wrong choice rarely fails loudly. It just costs you in rate, in claims exposure or in dock time, quietly, on every load. Here is how an operator decides.
Reefer: temperature, and more than temperature
The obvious cases are frozen and fresh. The less obvious ones are products with a spec range instead of a set point: chocolate, wine, pharmaceuticals, some chemicals, electronics in extreme weather. A reefer in the summer is climate control, not just refrigeration, and in January a "protect from freeze" load is a reefer load even though nothing about it is cold.
The cost of getting this wrong is asymmetric. Van freight in a reefer costs a few points of rate. Temperature freight in a van costs the load.
Dry van: the default, with two real limits
The 53-foot van is the volume base of US truckload for a reason: sealed, weatherproof, dock-height and everywhere. Its limits are weight and access. Past roughly 44,000 to 45,000 pounds of product the van is out of legal gross, and freight that needs side or crane loading cannot use a box at all.
Flatbed and step deck: when the freight will not fit through a door
Steel, machinery, building products, and anything loaded by crane or forklift from the side. The decisions that matter are securement and height: tarps, coil racks, chains and edge protection specified on the tender, and a step deck when the cargo plus a standard deck would clear 13 feet 6 inches.
The one-question shortcut
Ask what happens to the product if the trailer choice is wrong. If the answer is "a claim", it is a reefer load. If the answer is "a fine or a re-load", it is a flatbed conversation. If the answer is "nothing", ship it in a van and spend the savings elsewhere.
Where a mixed fleet changes the answer
A provider running reefers, vans and flatbeds of its own can move a borderline load to the right equipment without re-shopping it. That is the practical difference between choosing a trailer and being sold whatever trailer the desk happens to have.