What Is a Flatbed Trailer?

A flatbed trailer is an example of an open deck device with no sides or roof mainly used to transport large, heavy, bulky goods like machinery, construction supplies, mobile homes, container, dry cargo and aircraft. It is significantly simpler to load and unload cargo because of the flat design of the body.

The exposed body must not make the cargo transported with a flatbed truck susceptible to rain. The trailer is one of the most popular because of its flexibility. The trailer's length typically falls between 48 and 53 feet. Flatbed trailers and flatbed trucks are similar in terms of functionality.

A flat-shaped trailer, known as a flatbed trailer, is used to transport products with specific requirements.

Manually tying down loads with ropes serves to retain them. Tie-down hooks are located around the edge of a flatbed truck's bed and are tightened using methods like a trucker's hitch. Weather protection is optionally given by manually covering the load with a sheet and securing it with ropes. This slowdown, labor-intensive manual loading methods call for some caution and expertise. Furthermore, there is a chance that a load that was not correctly secured could come loose while in motion, which frequently causes accidents or traffic jams. Moreover, such a load has very little theft protection. Due to how slowly these loads may be loaded, enclosed truck designs with increased efficiency were created.

History of Flatbed Trailer

Alexander Winton created the first semi-truck in Cleveland, Ohio, which marks the beginning of the history of heavy haul. In 1896, Winton entered the "horseless Alexander Winston carriages" or automobile business.

As most road freight moved to containers or pallet loads transported on larger, more efficient trailers, flatbeds became increasingly rare in the 1980s. These trailers were optimized for quicker forklift loading. Containers are transported on specialized semi-trailers with twist locks in the corners to keep the container in place. Pallet loads are transported in either curtain-sided or box bodies that are loaded through the sides or the back. Both offer weather protection for goods and can be packed rapidly with ordinary loads, but they are less flexible for loading a single large load by crane. 

Around the same period, the haulage and logistics industry experienced a shift as a more significant percentage adopted a more regular nature, such as standard daily loads of boxes of equal sizes from a distribution center to a supermarket, as compared to the random, ad hoc nature of earlier road transport.

While they are still in use, the flatbed trailer is now utilized for more specialized cargoes like industrial material or lighter unusual loads like machinery, timber loads, drywall, or any load that needs to be forked without the help of a loading dock.