Doubles and Triples Operational Standpoint

2 x 28.5 is almost 56 feet of floor space. 3 feet of floor space times 17 sets is equal to the volume of a 53 footer.

Doubles can be rocky mountain doubles 48s with a 28.5 up to 53 and a 28.5 and the east coat turnpike doubles are a set of 48's.

Bottom line, A freight company is looking for the most floor space for the least cost.

 

Unloading two pups is a hell of alot quicker too. Can sick more forklifts on it without stepping on each other.

 

Say you are in LA and you have freight for Barstow, and Vegas. Rather than load both terminals on one trailer, necessitating the delaying of the Vegas freight while Barstow is being unloaded, you put the Barstow freight on one trailer and the Vegas freight on the other trailer. Then you just drop the Barstow pup at the yard there when you go through. And continue with the Vegas trailer.

 

Exactly what Big Don said. It's all about the location the freight needs to go to. In my area we load a lot of snow plows and if there's a big storm in a certain area we will load all the freight for that area on one pup and the rest of the freight on another pup. It prevents a dock worker from having to "touch" the freight more than needs be therefore less chance of damaging the freight.

 

What kind of sucks is having to re-position equipment. Say you are running freight from LA to SLC. OK you have lots of freight going to SLC, but not nearly as much going OUT of SLC. So you end up having to move gears and empty trailers back to where most of the freight is coming from.
There is a reason they call that third pup a "kite."

 

i have no idea;
When i first started w/ overnite they wanted to go to 100% doubles for linehaul operation. Now, you are saying you "heard" they/we/upsfreight want to go with vans?

When i was with NEMF we used virutally 100% vans and only very rarely used doubles. And i think they still only use vans.

 

I had this same question before I got an LTL job, and I still wonder about all the ins and outs of how the freight moves through a network of terminals. I work for a regional LTL, and I've noticed that companies like mine (Dayton Freight, Holland, Pitt-Ohio, Ward) don't run doubles, whereas the national LTL companies do. One advantage of doubles is that it helps them spread the freight around the country without handling it as much as was mentioned before.

One advantage of using 48s and 53s on linehaul is that most trailers can be dual-purpose (the exception being our liftgates, which stay put). When I come back from a peddle run, they can strip it and use it for linehaul. Linehaul brings trailers in, and they can be reloaded with peddle runs. So in that sense, a lot less jockeying of trailers is necessary, which is a big help at smaller terminals. Each method has advantages and disadvantages.

One way they cut out excessive handling of freight in long boxes is to load a trailer with freight bound for the farthest terminal in the nose, and the nearest terminal on the tail, so that freight doesn't necessarily need to be handled at each point in the system. Good question, @Mike2633 . It is a topic I'm fascinated by as well.