Who ships roofing shingles, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships roofing shingles

Plants, not head offices, because the plant is where the truck loads. Several of these companies run a dozen or more sites.

Ask for the plant traffic manager or the regional logistics manager. Manufacturers tender the plant-to-distributor leg, which is the truckload business worth having. The distributor-to-rooftop leg is usually a boom truck the distributor owns, and it is not brokered. Ask which leg before you quote, because only one of them is your freight.

Where it hauls

Shingle plants sit close to the markets they serve, because the product is dense and nobody hauls it far by choice. The big four run national networks: GAF across roughly 30 US locations, Owens Corning roofing out of 33 facilities including Savannah, Brookville, Irving and Medina, CertainTeed across about 65 North American sites, and TAMKO from five shingle plants in Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Maryland and Texas. Freight runs plant to distributor yard, then distributor to jobsite on smaller equipment. The plants to know:

How to open

The detail that proves you have hauled it: ask what their loads scale at. Shingles weigh out long before they cube out, and a broker who quotes them like dry van freight gives themselves away in one sentence.

Qualifying questions

• What does it scale, and how many squares? Shingles weigh out long before they cube out. A bundle is roughly 60 to 80 pounds and there are three to a square. Get the square count and the target gross, because a trailer that looks half empty can already be legal weight.
• Flatbed or van, and do you need tarps? Both move shingles. Flatbed is common plant to distributor and the load needs tarping against weather and road grime. Confirm whether tarps are on you and how many, because that is real money and real time.
• Is the distributor yard forklift served? Most distributor yards unload with a lull or a boom truck and it is quick. Some jobsite deliveries expect a truck with its own crane, which is a different piece of equipment entirely. Ask which one this is.
• How is it secured? Banded pallets of shingles shift and the straps bite into the bundles. Confirm the securement expectation, edge protection, and whether they want the load blocked, before the driver finds out at the first curve.
• Is this a stocking order or a jobsite pull? A stocking order into a yard is plannable and repeatable. A jobsite pull is date-critical because a crew is standing on a roof waiting. They price differently and they forgive differently. Ask which.

When to call

January and February, while distributors are stocking and before the roofing season opens in March. From March to October the plants are running and a new call is quoting overflow into a market that is already tight. The winter is also when the annual pricing conversation happens, which is exactly when a distributor is deciding how much to pull forward and therefore how many trucks it needs.