Phoenix to Visalia freight

Steel, pipe and machinery for a farm county

Metropolitan Phoenix has built at a pace few American cities can match, and a whole supply industry grew up around all that construction: steel service centers, structural fabricators, pipe and tube yards, precast and block plants, makers of metal buildings, and the dealers who sell and rebuild heavy equipment. Their customers are not only in Arizona. Visalia and the rest of Tulare County, among the top farm producers of any county in the nation, keep buying what those yards turn out. Dairies add freestall barns, shade structures and hay barns; packing houses and nut processors put up steel buildings, conveyors and storage tanks; and growers replanting orchards or drilling new wells order pipe, pumps and irrigation hardware. Much of it is long, heavy or oddly shaped, which is why it travels on an open deck rather than through a dock door.

Not every load needs an open trailer. Phoenix is also a distribution hub for the desert Southwest, and dry vans carry palletized building products, electrical gear, packaging and boxed parts west toward the valley. Cartons and pallets that a forklift can pull from a dock ride in a van, out of the blowing grit; a bundle of steel or a machine on skids rides on a flatbed. Tell the dispatcher what is going, and the equipment will follow the freight.

West across the desert, north over the Grapevine

The truck leaves Phoenix on Interstate 10 heading west, past Buckeye and Tonopah and out across a long, nearly empty reach of Sonoran Desert to Quartzsite, then down to Blythe, where the interstate crosses the Colorado River. Just inside California every truck pulls through the state’s agricultural inspection station, where inspectors ask what is aboard and may look inside; a bill of lading with a clear commodity description keeps the stop brief. West of Blythe the interstate crosses close to a hundred miles of open desert, past Desert Center and up over Chiriaco Summit, before it drops into the Coachella Valley at Indio and runs between Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio through the San Gorgonio Pass.

Beyond the pass the road crosses the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley, passing close to our dispatch desk in Covina, and continues into Los Angeles, where Interstate 5 takes over at the large interchange east of downtown. From there the route bends north through Glendale, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, climbs past Santa Clarita and Castaic Lake to Tejon Pass, a little over 4,000 feet up, and comes down the Grapevine to the valley floor. At the foot of the grade State Route 99 peels off to the right toward Bakersfield, and the last stretch is flat orchard, vineyard and dairy country through Delano and Tulare to the Visalia exits on State Route 198.

When Los Angeles traffic is at its worst, some drivers avoid the city altogether by taking Interstate 15 north from the Inland Empire to Barstow and State Route 58 west over Tehachapi Pass into Bakersfield. That way is longer in miles but can save time on a bad afternoon, and your dispatcher settles the road with the carrier before the truck leaves Phoenix.

Monsoon dust, valley fog and a snowy pass

From June through September the main thing working against this trip is heat. Afternoons in Phoenix and along the river at Blythe routinely climb past 110 degrees, the Coachella Valley is just as hot, and Visalia’s summer afternoons often reach the upper nineties or more. Open deck carriers recheck strap tension and tire pressure at each stop, because scorching pavement is hard on both, and drive the desert stretch early when they can. Steel that has ridden all day in that sun is too hot to handle bare handed, so a receiving crew should have gloves ready.

Midsummer into September is also the Arizona monsoon season. Afternoon thunderstorms can throw walls of dust across the highways around Phoenix with little warning, and Arizona’s advice to anyone caught in one is to pull off as far as possible, turn off the lights and keep a foot off the brake until it passes. Winter moves the trouble into California. Snow and ice can shut Interstate 5 over Tejon Pass for hours, and from December into February dense tule fog settles over State Route 99 on calm mornings, sometimes cutting visibility to a few car lengths. A delivery window with some give on winter mornings is safer than one that pushes a driver through the fog.

Why carriers are glad to leave Phoenix with a load

Phoenix receives a great deal more freight than it ships. Groceries, furniture, appliances, building products and consumer goods pour into the metro from Southern California, Texas and beyond, and many of the trucks that bring them face a long trip out with an empty or lightly paid trailer. That imbalance works in favor of anyone shipping west. A carrier that has just dropped steel on a Phoenix job site, or emptied a van at a distribution center in the West Valley, is happy to have a load pointed back toward California, and that makes the Phoenix end of this lane easy to cover.

The Visalia end is a good place to land as well. The San Joaquin Valley ships an enormous amount of food: nuts and dried fruit in dry vans, and dairy products and fresh fruit in refrigerated trailers, which we do not run. A truck that unloads in Tulare County, particularly from late summer into fall when the harvest is on, has plenty of chances to reload, and for a flatbed the next job is more likely farm equipment, hay or steel bound for Southern California. Neither end leaves a carrier stranded, so trucks for this trip are not hard to find.

Flatbeds, step decks and the occasional wide load

A 48 or 53 foot flatbed takes most of what leaves Phoenix for the valley: bundles of tube and angle, pipe, rebar, purlins and panels for metal buildings, pallets of block or pavers, and machinery on skids. Taller pieces such as a tank, a mixer wagon or a section of conveyor may need a step deck to stay under the legal height, and the dispatcher checks dimensions before choosing the trailer. Tarps are worth asking for on anything that should arrive clean, because grit blows across the interstate in the desert and a monsoon storm can soak a load in minutes.

Anything wider than 8 feet 6 inches is oversize, which means permits from Arizona and California and, for the widest pieces, escort vehicles; a load like that crosses Los Angeles only during the hours its permit allows, so give as much notice as you can. Dry vans carry the boxed and palletized freight, and power only is available if you keep your own trailers and need a tractor to pull one to Visalia. Our Arizona flatbed page describes open deck service across the state.

A long day’s drive and an hour of clock

At truck speeds the drive takes about ten and a half hours. Federal rules allow one driver 11 hours behind the wheel and then require ten hours off, and loading, fuel and the required half hour pause all have to fit inside a 14 hour working window, so freight loaded in Phoenix in the morning normally reaches Visalia the next morning rather than late the same night. Valley receivers tend to prefer that anyway. Freight that is ready the afternoon before can load then; the driver covers part of the desert that evening, takes the overnight break and still reaches Visalia in good time the following day.

The clock is the other detail. Arizona keeps Mountain Standard Time all year and skips daylight saving, so from early November until the second Sunday in March Phoenix is an hour ahead of Visalia, and through the rest of the year the two clocks read the same. A 7 AM pickup in Phoenix in January is 6 AM in California. Each appointment on the rate confirmation is written in the local time of its own dock, so no one shows up an hour off.

How the lane is covered and what the dispatcher needs

Every request starts at our dispatch desk in Covina. The dispatcher who takes it books an open deck or van carrier that has passed our screening in Highway, which checks operating authority, insurance and safety history, and when the freight fits a van and one of our own tractors is in Phoenix looking for a way home, that tractor gets the first offer. The same person confirms the pickup, watches the truck across the desert, takes your calls and closes the file when the receiver signs.

The quote form asks for the pickup address and hours, the delivery address in or around Visalia, the commodity and weight, the length, width and height of anything riding on a flatbed, the trailer you want and the date. Mention a job site with no forklift, a tarp requirement or a receiver that unloads by appointment only. If this lane has been priced today, its dated range sits just above the form; your dispatcher replies to the form with the firm figure.

More on each end: truckload shipping in Phoenix, Arizona freight shipping, our Visalia page and California freight shipping. Freight that stops short of the valley may suit Phoenix to Los Angeles freight, and the last part of this trip is the same road as Los Angeles to Visalia freight.