Dry Van vs Flatbed vs Reefer: Choosing the Right Trailer

Dry Van

The enclosed box trailer most people picture when they think "truck." Fully enclosed, weather-protected, and the most widely available equipment type on the road — which usually makes it the cheapest and easiest to book.

• Best for: Palletized general freight, packaged goods, retail products, electronics, non-perishable food
• Typical interior: 53' × 8.5' × 9' (roughly 3,489 cubic feet)
• Loading: Rear doors only, so load order matters — last on, first off
• Watch out for: No climate control and no side/top access, so oversized or irregularly shaped freight can be hard to load efficiently

Flatbed

An open trailer with no walls or roof, loaded from the top or sides with a crane, forklift, or side-loader. Freight is secured with straps, chains, and tarps rather than just stacked and closed in.

• Best for: Construction materials, steel, machinery, lumber, oversized or irregularly shaped loads that won't fit through van doors
• Loading: Top or side access — much faster for heavy equipment loading than backing into a dock
• Watch out for: Freight is fully exposed to weather; proper tarping and securement isn't optional, it's a safety and legal requirement

Reefer (Refrigerated)

A dry van with a built-in temperature-control unit, capable of holding freight at a set temperature — refrigerated or even frozen — for the length of the haul.

• Best for: Perishable food, pharmaceuticals, floral, anything temperature-sensitive
• Typical interior: Slightly less usable space than a standard dry van due to the refrigeration unit and airflow channels
• Watch out for: Higher cost due to fuel for the reefer unit; airflow matters, so freight often needs to be loaded with gaps for air circulation rather than packed floor-to-ceiling

	Dry Van	Flatbed	Reefer
Weather protection	Full	None (tarped)	Full + climate control
Loading method	Rear doors	Top/side	Rear doors
Best for	General freight	Oversized/heavy	Perishables
Relative cost	Lowest	Moderate	Highest

Mixed and edge cases

Some freight genuinely sits on the line — palletized food that's shelf-stable but temperature-sensitive in extreme heat, for example, sometimes ships dry van in moderate weather and reefer in summer. When in doubt, the cost of an unnecessary reefer booking is almost always smaller than the cost of a spoiled or rejected load.

Planning the load once you've picked the trailer

Choosing the right trailer type is step one. Step two is making sure your freight actually fits efficiently once loaded — pallet count, stacking, and weight distribution all shift depending on whether you're working with a dry van's fixed interior or a flatbed's open deck. Modeling your specific freight against the real dimensions of your chosen trailer type removes the guesswork from that second step.