Truckload Freight Services in Georgia and the Southeast

We own the trucks. That is the entire argument.

Davis Delivery Service is an asset-based motor carrier. We own 26-foot box trucks and 53-foot tractor-trailers, we employ the drivers who operate them, and when you book a truckload with us, the company you spoke to on the phone is the company whose truck backs into your dock.

That sounds obvious. It is not how a large share of truckload freight actually moves, and the difference matters most on the day something goes wrong.

You do not have to take our word for any of it. We hold USDOT 749868 and MC-339600, authorized by the FMCSA as a Motor Carrier of Property. Type that DOT number into the FMCSA’s public SAFER lookup and you will see our authority, our operating status, our inspection history and our crash record, whether we like what it says or not. Over the 24 months to August 2026 we were inspected 11 times and placed out of service zero times.

One housekeeping note, because there are several companies with our name: the one in Buford, Georgia is USDOT 749868. There is an unrelated Davis Delivery Service in McDonough, Georgia and another with our exact legal name in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check the number, not the name.

When truckload beats LTL: about ten skids

This is the question most people actually arrive with, so here is the answer before anything else.

A standard 48×40 pallet loaded two-across, with the 48-inch dimension running front to back, takes up four linear feet of trailer per pair. Ten skids is five pairs, which is 20 linear feet — and 20 linear feet is exactly the capacity-load threshold published in Old Dominion’s Item 390, Southeastern Freight Lines’ Item 390 and R+L Carriers’ Item 390. ABF sets its line at 24 feet, which is twelve pallets. Past those thresholds the carrier reprices the shipment as a capacity or volume load, and the economics that made LTL attractive stop applying.

Two honest caveats, because the rule is not a law of physics.

Linear feet depends on how freight is actually loaded, not on how many skids you have. Turn those same pallets ninety degrees and a pair occupies three and a third feet, so ten skids come to under 17 linear feet and would not trip a 20-foot rule. Stackable freight takes fewer floor positions again.

And weight can trip the rule before length does. Old Dominion, Southeastern and R+L all set a 20,000-pound capacity trigger, ABF 19,999 pounds, independent of how much floor the load uses. Ten pallets averaging a ton each get there on weight alone.

The other half of the decision is what the equipment actually holds. A 26-foot box truck takes twelve skids floor loaded; a 53-foot trailer takes twenty-four. So ten skids is not only where LTL pricing turns — it is about where a load starts to justify a truck of its own rather than a place on somebody else’s.

So: ten skids is the right number to start asking the question. Call us with the actual pallet count, dimensions and weight and we will tell you honestly which way it prices — including when the answer is that you should ship it LTL.

What we run, and how far

Three types of equipment, doing three different jobs.

53-foot tractor-trailers run anywhere in Georgia. Twenty-four skids floor loaded, up to 44,000 pounds.

26-foot box trucks run into South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina. Twelve skids floor loaded. A box truck is the same thing as a straight truck — one vehicle, no separate trailer — and it gets into places a 53-foot trailer simply cannot: tight urban docks, job sites, retail back lots, anywhere the approach will not take a tractor.

53-foot and 32-foot liftgate trailers. Liftgate is normally a small-truck service, because the reason you need a gate is that there is no dock — and no dock often means no room for a big trailer either. So when a load runs past the twelve skids a box truck holds and the destination still has nowhere to back into, the usual answer is that the freight has to come apart first. R+L’s published tariff is explicit about it: liftgate service is capped at a skid of 2,000 pounds measuring 60 inches by 48 inches, and anything larger “will be broken down for pickup or delivery and the lift gate charge doubled” (Item 520, Note 1, effective 1 April 2026). We run liftgate trailers in both 53-foot and 32-foot lengths so oversized freight can come off the truck in one piece. The 32-footer covers the awkward middle — more than a box truck takes, less approach room than a 53 needs.

That combination is the point. A carrier with only tractor-trailers will tell you a delivery is impossible. A carrier with only box trucks cannot take a full load. A carrier without a liftgate trailer will tell you to break the freight down and charge you twice for the privilege. We would rather send the right vehicle than talk you into the one we happen to own.

How truckload is priced

Two ways, and we will tell you which one fits before you commit.

Hourly, when the work is time-shaped rather than distance-shaped — multi-stop runs, a day of shuttling between two facilities, jobs where the loading is the variable.

Per load, quoted, when it is a defined move from A to B.

We do not publish a rate card, because a truckload rate that ignores lane, timing, and what happens at both ends is a rate you will end up arguing about. Call 678-926-3939 with the origin, destination, pallet count and weight and you will get a real number.

Waiting time: $30 for the first hour

Detention is billed the same on a truckload as on anything else we haul: 30 minutes free, then $1.00 a minute, billed to the actual minute, with a $30 minimum. Because the minimum and the rate cross at exactly one hour, anything from 31 to 60 minutes costs $30 flat.

For comparison, at one hour of detention the major LTL carriers’ published tariffs run from $69 to $185, and five of the seven round up to a full 15-minute block rather than billing the minute you used. The full comparison, with item numbers, is on our warehouse and distribution page.

Dedicated trucks

If the volume is steady enough, we will hire out a box truck or a tractor-trailer to you to use as you see fit — your route, your schedule, your priorities, our equipment and our driver. It suits businesses that have outgrown booking loads one at a time but are not ready to buy trucks and hire CDL drivers.

Talk to us about the volume and we will tell you whether dedicated actually saves you money or whether you are better off on per-load pricing. Sometimes the honest answer is the second one.

How fast

Next day is standard. We have same-day availability, but not unlimited — it depends on what is already committed that morning. Call early and ask; we will give you a straight yes or no rather than a maybe that turns into a no at four o’clock.

What changes when you book through a broker instead

Most of our truckload work comes from companies that were using a broker and got let down. So it is worth being precise about what is structurally different, rather than just claiming we try harder.

A freight broker does not own trucks. Federal law defines a broker as a person “other than a motor carrier” who arranges transportation by motor carrier for compensation. When you pay a broker, you are paying a company to go and find someone else to haul your freight. Sometimes that works fine. Here is what is different when it does not.

Cargo liability attaches to the carrier, not the broker. The Carmack Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 14706, makes the carrier “liable to the person entitled to recover under the receipt or bill of lading” for “the actual loss or injury to the property.” Federal courts have generally held that this carrier liability does not extend to brokers. Your cargo claim runs against whoever actually carried the freight — which, if you booked through a broker, may be a company you have never spoken to and did not choose.

The broker’s bond is smaller than people assume, and it is not a cargo policy. Brokers must hold a $75,000 surety bond. Two things about it are worth knowing. It is $75,000 in aggregate, not per claim — Form BMC-84 states the surety is not discharged “unless and until such payment or payments shall amount in the aggregate to the penalty of the bond,” so a broker that fails owing many customers is dividing one $75,000 pot. And the statute defines what it is for: 49 U.S.C. § 13906(b)(2)(A) makes the bond available to pay claims “arising from its failure to pay freight charges.” Neither the statute nor the bond form mentions cargo loss or damage at all.

Nobody is federally required to insure your cargo. This surprises people. FMCSA removed the cargo insurance requirement for general freight in 2011; only household goods movers still face a federal minimum. Carriers that carry real cargo coverage do it voluntarily. So the question to ask any carrier or broker — including us — is not “are you insured,” it is “what cargo limit do you carry, and can I see the certificate.” Ask us and you will get it.

Three things we are not going to tell you, because they are not true.

We are not going to tell you that you have no recourse against a broker. On 14 May 2026 the Supreme Court held unanimously, in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, that state-law claims for negligently hiring an unsafe carrier are not preempted — so a broker can be sued for who it put your freight on. A great deal of writing on this subject predates that decision and is now wrong.

We are not going to tell you brokers are never responsible for cargo. Whether a company is a broker or a carrier in the eyes of the law turns on what it actually agreed to, not on what it calls itself. The Eleventh Circuit put the test as: with whom did the shipper entrust the cargo?

And we are not going to quote you a scary number for how much freight fraud costs the industry. FMCSA told Congress in 2024 that it lacks the data to quantify it. The figures you see circulating come from trade-association member surveys, not from measurement.

What we will say is narrower and checkable: we are the carrier. Our authority, our trucks, our drivers, our insurance, our DOT number. When something goes wrong there is one company to call, and it is the one you hired.

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