You’ve got a skid steer, a walk-behind trencher, a compactor, or a pallet of shoring that has to get to a jobsite two states over. It’s heavy. It’s awkward. It loads from the side or the top, not through the back of a dry van. And it doesn’t come close to filling a 48-foot flatbed.
So you call around, and you hear the same two answers. Traditional LTL says “we can’t take that” or quotes a number that climbs on the invoice. A full flatbed carrier quotes you for a whole trailer you’ll only half fill. Neither one fits, and your machine is still sitting on the ground.
That gap is exactly what partial flatbed is built for.
Why construction gear falls through the cracks
Big iron is the classic in-between load. It’s open-deck freight, which means it needs a deck that loads from the side and top and lets you chain down at rated points. Dry-van LTL can’t handle that, and even when a network accepts long or hard-to-handle freight, it often surcharges it after the fact.
The other problem is the shape of the bill. Low-density and long freight is what the LTL accessorials were built to catch. A Density Minimum Charge or a Linear Foot Charge can turn a quote you budgeted into a number you didn’t. If you’ve ever watched a settled quote balloon on the invoice, you already know the feeling. We break down how that happens in our accessorial explainer.
How partial flatbed fits a single machine
Partial flatbed, also called open-deck LTL, puts your machine on shared deck space next to other partial loads. You pay for the part of the deck your gear uses, not for a whole trailer.
The sweet spot is roughly under ten feet of deck space and under about 10,000 pounds. That covers a lot of construction gear:
- Compact equipment: skid steers, mini excavators, trenchers, and compactors
- Attachments and buckets, secured separately from the machine
- Generators, compressors, and light towers
- Pumps and small “big iron” pieces
- Palletized building materials that ride alongside
Because it’s open-deck, oversized and irregular items work right next to standard palletized freight. And partial loads can dispatch direct from origin to destination instead of bouncing through a terminal network, so there are fewer handoffs and fewer chances for something to get knocked or delayed.
The part that matters most: the quote is the quote
Here’s the plain promise. A FlatbedLTL partial flatbed quote is locked in. It is not subject to the Density Minimum Charge or the Linear Foot Charge. We quote a number, and that’s the number you pay.
Here’s the difference in rough terms. Figures are illustrative, not a rate quote.
| Typical LTL | Partial flatbed | |
|---|---|---|
| Quoted price | Looks low | Priced for your deck space |
| Open-deck handling | Often rejected | Built for it |
| Density or Linear Foot Charge | Can hit later | Never applies |
| What you pay | Sometimes more than quoted | The quoted number |
You shouldn’t need a logistics department to move one machine. That’s the work we do for you.
Chained down right
A machine only wins if it arrives the way it left. Securement gets planned around Working Load Limit versus cargo weight: the aggregate WLL of the tie-downs has to be at least half the weight of what you’re hauling, with heavier and rolling equipment needing more than that minimum. Equipment gets chained at the manufacturer’s rated points, and attachments come down and get secured on their own. That’s standard open-deck craft, and it’s what keeps your gear on the deck through every mile.
When partial isn’t the answer
Sometimes it isn’t, and we’ll tell you.
If your machine runs past ten feet of deck or well over 10,000 pounds, or you’ve got several pieces moving to the same site, you’re into full flatbed or specialty open-deck territory. That’s a job for our parent company, Comet National Shipping, which handles full flatbed, oversized and specialty open-deck, and more. Right-sizing the mode is the whole point. A full trailer that fits beats a partial that doesn’t.
And if the machine already went sideways, a refused load or a carrier that never showed, that’s distressed load recovery, and we can step in to re-secure and re-deliver so your project stays on schedule.
Everybody wins
When your machine rides on the deck space it actually needs, you pay for that space and nothing more, the carrier fills a deck that would’ve run partly empty, and the gear gets to the jobsite in one piece. That’s how everybody wins.
Got a machine LTL won’t touch and a full flatbed can’t justify? Get a locked-in quote at /get-a-quote or call (800) 831-5376. Send us the load, and we’ll tell you the right way to move it.