A deck with no walls — for freight with no box.
The mode for everything that loads by crane, drives on under its own power, or simply will not fit through a swing door.
Flatbed — or open-deck — freight is cargo that moves on a trailer with no roof and no walls: a flat platform loadable from above by crane, from the side by forklift, or from the rear by driving the machine straight on. Where a dry van protects boxed, palletized goods, open deck exists for the freight that defines heavy industry — structural steel, lumber units, pipe, excavators, transformers, pre-fab building modules — loads that are too tall, too wide, too long, too heavy, or simply shaped wrong for an enclosed trailer.
The open-deck family is a height ladder. A standard flatbed rides 60" off the road and legally carries cargo up to 8'6" tall. A step-deckdrops its main deck to 41–48" for cargo up to 10'2". A double-drop (lowboy)sinks a well to 18–22" for cargo up to 11'6". An RGN detaches its gooseneck so 65,000–200,000 lb machines drive on under their own power. A Conestoga adds a rolling tarp system for weather protection without hand-tarping, and a hotshot covers small urgent open-deck loads on a fast-dispatch gooseneck. One desk at Qeep quotes and books all six.
When do you need open deck instead of a dry van?
Three triggers. Geometry:a dry van’s interior tops out around 110" high and 98" wide at the door — anything taller, wider, or longer than 53' needs a deck. Loading method:if the freight loads by overhead crane, side forklift, or drives on under its own power, an enclosed trailer physically can’t accept it. Weight concentration: a dry van floor is rated for distributed pallet loads; a 40,000 lb press or a tracked excavator concentrates weight in ways only a reinforced open deck (or an RGN well) is engineered to carry. If any of the three applies, you’re an open-deck shipment — the only question is which trailer.
Oversize vs overweight — what triggers a permit?
The federal-standard legal envelope on US highways is 8'6" (102") wide, 13'6" tall, 53' of trailer, and 80,000 lb gross vehicle weight on five axles. Exceed any dimension and the load is oversize; exceed the weight and it’s overweight — and each state the truck crosses issues its own permit, with its own fees, routes, travel hours and escort rules. Most states restrict oversize travel to sunrise-to-sunset, many ban weekend and holiday movement, and loads beyond roughly 120,000 lb gross or extreme dimensions become super loads requiring engineering review, route surveys, and police escorts. Qeep files every permit in-house and builds the escort plan into the quote — so the legality is our problem, not yours.
How is flatbed freight secured and tarped?
Under FMCSA cargo securement rules (49 CFR Part 393), every open-deck load is chained or strapped so the combined working load limit of the tiedowns is at least half the cargo weight, with minimum tiedown counts set by cargo length and commodity-specific rules for steel coils, lumber, pipe and machinery. Weather protection is the second layer: 4-ply lumber tarps for dimensional wood and drywall, 6-ply steel tarps for plate and coil, custom smoke tarps for machinery — or a Conestogawhen nothing may touch the cargo at all. Tarping on standard flatbed runs $50–150 per load; on Conestoga it’s built into the trailer and the rate.
