I've done flatbed work for awhile and never had any official training. Learned some stuff from the bossman. Like others said, most places that you pick up will tell you how they want it done or how others do it. I would ask other drivers sometimes and honestly let them know I was new at flatbedding, and you know, not one ever refused to offer advise. I also would always look at other loads going down the road and at truck stops to see how the drivers secured their load. That JJ Keller book is good because it will tell you the rules as far as the amount of straps or chains needed per weight or length of load. Of course the wisest thing I ever heard was you can't have enough straps or chains. Always better safe than sorry.

 

don't do coils. don't do pipe. duct tape exhaust on all turbo charged vehicles. now you're good to go.

 

be carefull when hauling coils i front would x chains then put 1 on each side hauling them suiside would chain middle side to side if hauling lumber block each end up so that the middle is lower than back and front.always keep coils off floor let them rest in coil racks. if you haul plates or sheets block on top to give the cain binders more slack use coil guards watch loose ends they cut things always tarp bricks the fall apart keeps them from falling on cars when going down road.

 

the only bad thing that happened in my 6 years of flatbed was i had 2, 45 foot alluminum trusses. the load was preloaded and the loader only put 2 peices of wood under the entire truss, and they were more to the center of the load. This causes the outsides of the truss to kinda rebound over every bump. i had about 10 straps on it, it wound up eatting thru a few of them and they snapped.i didnt have any spare straps. luckly i was only like 20 mins away and got the load off. i shoulda had a forklift guy raise it real quick to slide a few more peice of wood under there so it wouldnt rebound like it did. and i shoulda put some edge protectors on there. live n learn. all i can say is flatbed sucks in the winter. we had a guy slip off the top of the load a week ago and broke some bones

 

hi i would like to know if this book is good and if you can learn a lot
thanks

 

The best book, by far, is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations Pocketbook.

Read 393.100 through 393.136. In the edition I have this is pages 569 through 602. Read it often. If you do read it, you will some of the advice given in this thread is good, and some is illegal.