Flatbed Dispatch Service: Tarp, Detention and TONU on the Rate Con Before You Roll

Our flatbed dispatch service is for owner-operators and fleets of 1–10 trucks running open deck under their own MC, with authority at least 6 months old. Newer authorities can still apply, but we built the desk for carriers who know their truck and are short on board time and phone leverage.

You run flatbed, step deck, hotshot or a conestoga, a flatbed or step deck with a rolling tarp system, and you want Texas and steel-belt freight. We run those lanes every day.

Know your numbers before you take a rate. DAT's national flatbed spot rate averaged $2.59 a mile, linehaul only, for the week ending Sept 25, 2026. ATRI put the 2025 average cost to run a truck at $2.336 a mile, or $1.854 without fuel. Fuel surcharge pays for fuel, not profit, so we read the all-in rate before the linehaul.

We get tarp pay, the extra pay for tarping, usually priced by drop size (4, 6 or 8 ft), plus detention, layover and TONU, the truck-ordered-not-used pay you're owed when a broker cancels after you're dispatched, agreed before booking and written on the rate con. If a pay item isn't on the rate con, it's a favor, not pay.

Tarp work. If the shipper wants it tarped, we price it before you roll, whether it's a steel tarp, the tarp sized for steel loads, or a smoke tarp, the small front tarp that keeps exhaust off the load. Tarping for free is a gym membership nobody asked for.

Detention. The DOT Inspector General found contracts typically allow about 2 hours to load or unload before detention starts, and carriers told the OIG that shippers sometimes refuse to pay when the BOL isn't signed with arrival and departure times. The same report estimated detention costs each truckload driver $1,281 to $1,534 a year, based on 2013 data. It also tied waiting to safety:

“We estimated that a 15-minute increase in average dwell time—the total time spent by a truck at a facility—increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2 percent.” (U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General, 2018)

So we get the free time and hourly rate on the rate con, and you get in and out times signed on the BOL.

TONU and layover. A cancelled load with no TONU amount on the rate con is an argument you usually lose. Same with layover when an appointment slides a day.

We book steel, coils, pipe, lumber, building materials and machinery, mostly in and out of Texas, then Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, then Alabama and Oklahoma. Before a flatbed load reaches you, we check its securement needs against your chains and binders, straps, edge protectors and deck.

The baseline securement rule is in 49 CFR 393.106(d):

“The aggregate working load limit of tiedowns used to secure an article or group of articles against movement must be at least one-half times the weight of the article or group of articles.” (FMCSA, 49 CFR 393.106(d))

Coils, lumber, machinery and pipe add their own gear. On a coil load we confirm a coil rack, the cradle that holds a steel coil on the deck. On stacked lumber we confirm dunnage, the blocks between bundles. On pipe that can roll we confirm pipe stakes, uprights that keep pipe from rolling off the deck.

Inspectors check this at the scale. Cargo securement was the vehicle focus of CVSA's 2026 International Roadcheck, where inspectors wrote 1,724 cargo securement OOS violations, out-of-service orders that park the truck until it's fixed.

Where flatbed money moved at the end of September: DAT's top flatbed origin regions for the week ending Sept 25, 2026, linehaul only.

Candor charges 7–11% of the carrier's gross per load. There's no weekly fee, setup fee, termination fee or long-term contract, and you cancel with written notice. Fleets running several trucks can discuss the rate. See the full breakdown in our fee details below.

The fee covers load search and rate negotiation, broker vetting and credit checks, carrier packets, rate cons, invoicing, factoring paperwork, chasing detention, TONU, layover and tarp pay, and a weekly gross report.

Worked example, not a quote: a 1,000-mile load at DAT's $2.59 national flatbed average pays $2,590 linehaul. At 7% the dispatch fee is $181.30; at 11% it's $284.90. Your rate, miles and fee vary by load.

We dispatch open deck across the United States, with the heaviest volume in Texas, then Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, then Alabama and Oklahoma. We run Texas lanes every day.

On Texas loads we book against state limits too: a 14 ft legal height without a permit, per TxDMV, and a $60 TxDMV single-trip permit when a non-divisible load runs over legal size or weight.