Almost nobody starts a trucking career on a lowboy. The usual route is a Class A CDL and a couple of clean years, then flatbed, then a stepdeck hauling smaller equipment, and only after that a lowboy carrying excavators, dozers and cranes. Each stage teaches something the next one depends on, and carriers want to see your record at each one before they put a machine on your trailer that is often worth more than the truck pulling it.

At Fastex Logistics, lowboy is the highest-paid seat in our Orlando operation, and we fill it from drivers with verified flatbed or stepdeck experience. If you drive dry van or reefer today and want to end up in heavy haul, these are the steps we look for.

What lowboy drivers haul

A lowboy has a deck that drops low between the gooseneck and the rear axles. On our trailers the well sits 18 to 24 inches off the road. Florida’s legal height limit is 13 feet 6 inches including the load, so a deck that low lets you carry a machine roughly 11 to 12 feet tall without running over height. A standard flatbed deck sits at about 60 inches, and the same machine on it would need an overheight permit.

Out of Central Florida, lowboy freight is mostly construction and industrial equipment going to and from job sites: excavators, bulldozers, cranes and large loaders. Many of these loads are oversize, overweight or both, so they move on permits and fixed routes, and the widest and tallest ones travel with escort vehicles.

Most lowboys use a removable gooseneck, or RGN. You detach the gooseneck, the front of the trailer lowers to the ground, and the machine drives on over the front. A hydraulic RGN does the detaching with hydraulics powered by the tractor’s wet kit or a pony motor. A mechanical gooseneck weighs less but takes longer to get off. Fixed-neck lowboys load from the rear over ramps. On heavier loads you’ll also see extra axles (flip axles, jeeps and boosters) added to spread the weight and stay within bridge laws.

Step 1: Get your Class A and two clean years

You don’t need a special endorsement to pull a lowboy. A Class A CDL covers it, and what carriers want on top of it is time behind the wheel. Our baseline is the same one listed on our CDL driver jobs in Orlando page:

• Class A CDL
• At least two years of Class A experience
• No accidents in the last two years
• No more than three moving violations

Under two years isn’t an automatic no, but expect a longer conversation with our recruiter about where you’ve run and what you’ve hauled. Endorsements aren’t required for lowboy work. They can widen the other assignments you’re eligible for, so mention any you hold.

Expect your record to get a closer look for lowboy work than for most freight, since a customer’s machine will be riding on your securement.

Step 2: Learn securement on a flatbed

Flatbed is where open deck drivers learn cargo securement, and securement is what decides whether you ever get near a lowboy. On a flatbed you’re responsible for keeping the load on the trailer under FMCSA’s cargo securement rules in 49 CFR Part 393. You’ll work with straps, chains, binders, edge protection and tarps, and you’ll learn which of them each load calls for.

Out of Orlando, flatbed freight is mostly building material: structural steel, lumber, pipe, drywall and roofing going to construction sites around Central Florida and the Southeast. Most pickups and deliveries happen in yards or on job sites, so you spend less time waiting at docks than a dry van driver does and more time on the deck with a strap bar in your hand.

If you’re coming from dry van or reefer, you don’t need flatbed experience to get hired with us. Flatbed is where you start on the open deck side.

Use this stage to learn working load limits well enough to do the math without looking anything up. Build the inspection habit the rules require, too: check your securement within the first 50 miles of a trip, then again every 3 hours or 150 miles, whichever comes first (49 CFR 392.9). Clean roadside inspections are the easiest way to show you secure loads properly, and we pay up to $500 for them.

Step 3: Move to a stepdeck and start hauling equipment

A stepdeck, also called a drop deck, has a short upper deck over the tractor and a lower main deck behind it. The main deck sits about 42 inches off the ground, against 60 on a flatbed, so a load around 10 feet tall stays under 13 feet 6 inches without an oversize permit. That opens up freight like skid steers, tractors and smaller excavators, and for most drivers it’s the first steady work with machines on wheels and tracks.

Here the work starts to look like lowboy work. You load equipment over ramps and learn where each machine’s tie-down points are. You also find out how easily a tracked machine walks on a deck when the chains are wrong. Some shippers have their own operator load the machine, and on other jobs the driver does it, so any time you can get running equipment is worth having.

We move drivers to stepdeck and lowboy after flatbed, once they’ve shown they can secure a load properly.

Step 4: Learn the heavy equipment securement rule

Machines that weigh 10,000 pounds or more and run on wheels or tracks have their own securement rule, 49 CFR 393.130, and nearly everything on a lowboy falls under it. The rule requires that:

• Accessory equipment such as buckets, blades and booms is fully lowered and secured to the trailer.
• Articulated machines, such as wheel loaders, are restrained so they can’t articulate in transit.
• The machine is restrained against forward, rearward, sideways and vertical movement with at least four tiedowns, attached as close as practicable to its front and rear or at mounting points made for that purpose.

Four is the minimum number of tiedowns. A separate rule, 49 CFR 393.106, sets how much they have to hold: their working load limits must add up to at least half the weight of the cargo. A tiedown that runs straight from the trailer to the machine counts for only half of its rated limit.

Take a 40,000-pound excavator. You need 20,000 pounds of counted working load limit. A 3/8-inch Grade 70 chain is rated at 6,600 pounds, so as a direct tiedown it counts for 3,300. Four of those add up to 13,200, which is well short. You’d need seven of them, or four 1/2-inch Grade 70 chains (rated at 11,300 pounds and counted at 5,650 each), to clear 20,000. That’s why lowboy drivers carry more chain, and heavier chain, than most flatbed drivers.

Step 5: Learn to run on permits

Florida’s legal limits are 102 inches (8 feet 6 inches) wide and 13 feet 6 inches high, and gross weight on the Interstate system tops out at 80,000 pounds. A tractor and lowboy can weigh roughly 35,000 to 40,000 pounds empty, so a heavy machine puts many loads over weight as well as over size. Anything past a legal limit moves on a permit, so on most loads a lowboy driver is working inside permit conditions.

A few of those conditions come up on almost every load:

• A permit is good only for the route printed on it. If a road on that route is closed, call it in and get the permit changed before you take another road.
• Each state issues its own permit with its own rules, so a move across several states means several permits.
• In Florida, loads over 10 feet wide move in daytime hours only and not on holidays. Your permit tells you which days of the week you can run.
• Florida bars oversize movement when visibility drops below 1,000 feet, which matters in morning fog and summer thunderstorms.
• Florida escort requirements go by size. A load over 12 feet wide needs at least one escort vehicle, and one over 14 feet wide needs two, one in front and one behind. A load over 14 feet 6 inches tall needs an escort out front with a height pole. Loads over 16 feet tall, and many moves over 16 feet wide, need law enforcement escorts.

The Florida rules are in Florida Administrative Code Rule 14-26.012, which FDOT revises from time to time. On the road, the permit you’re carrying is what you follow.

Daylight-only travel also changes how you plan your hours. You still have the 11-hour driving limit inside the 14-hour window, but on a wide load you can only use them while the sun is up, so a lowboy trip usually takes longer than the miles suggest.

What the job is like day to day

Lowboy days are slower than flatbed days. You might load a machine on a muddy job site with no dock and no forklift, wait on a permit, then meet your escorts at a set time and run only in daylight. On a short move, getting the machine loaded, chained and measured can take longer than the drive. If you like quick drop-and-hook days, lowboy will frustrate you. Drivers who like planning a load and getting it right tend to do well on it, and it pays more than any other seat we have.

How the path works at Fastex

We run five trailer types out of our terminal at 9640 Sidney Hayes Rd, in the industrial area south of Orlando International Airport: flatbed, stepdeck, lowboy, conestoga and reefer. Assignments are matched to verified experience. Drivers new to open deck start on flatbed. Stepdeck and lowboy come later, and lowboy seats go to drivers with verified flatbed or stepdeck experience.

These are company driver positions. You drive our equipment, and there’s no lease, deposit or escrow. Our maintenance shop is at the terminal, and our safety team is in house. Weekly pay runs $3,000 to $5,000 depending on trailer type and lane assignment, with lowboy the highest-paid seat in the Orlando operation.

Common questions

Do I need a special endorsement to drive a lowboy?

No. A Class A CDL covers it. What you need beyond the license is experience, mainly open deck securement and time around equipment.

How long does it take to move up to a lowboy?

There’s no fixed timeline. Lowboy seats go to drivers with verified flatbed or stepdeck experience, so it depends on how quickly you build that record.

Will I have to operate the equipment?

Sometimes. On some jobs the shipper or receiver has an operator who loads and unloads the machine, and on others the driver does it. Experience running equipment helps either way.

Is lowboy the same as heavy haul?

Lowboy is one part of heavy haul. Heavy haul also covers multi-axle specialized trailers and superloads that need engineered routes and more escorts. For most drivers, a lowboy is the first heavy haul trailer they pull.

If you have the open deck record and want a lowboy seat, use our quick apply form and tell the recruiter what you’ve hauled and on which trailers.

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