Starting A Trucking Business

[WALTERK]

If you come to this forum looking for some help on starting a trucking company, I would seriously analyze the numbers provided by DAT ( this is the link: http://www.dat.com/resources/trendlines ) before you invest your hard earned money. I think most of the members on this site would agree that trucking has never been more challenging than it is right now, and year 2017 will be a real test for it yet again leaving many truckers and company owners broke or in serious financial situation. There is a word out there that huge American carriers such as Swift, FedEX, etc, have thousands of trucks parked unable to find freight for them. So, of course, the decision is yours, but at least you can't say later that you were not been warned.... Good luck.

 

[KeyFactor]

As a factor, I deal with many small and medium-sized trucking companies. So many of them end in failure. I've noticed that economies of scale certainly pay an important role - carriers with fewer than 10 trucks seem to have a much higher failure rate. I also notice that many fail because they are truckers and not business people. This is not a criticism so much as a statement that your mentality must change if you wish to succeed as a business owner.

Case study: a client of mine has been with me for two years, during which time I've helped her support a 300% increase in sales - which, by the way, is the entire point of factoring. Unfortunately, I later learned that this was not accompanied by a similar growth in profits because the company doesn't know its own costs. I set them up with a new accountant who showed them how to measure and track their operating cost per mile for each truck. We then offered to meet the client monthly - at no cost - to analyse the numbers and make recommendations of corrective actions. The client has not taken us up on our offer and I am not optimistic on their survival as a business. In this case, factoring did its part in growing the top line, but that means nothing unless the entrepreneur is committed to growing its bottom line.

Hope this is useful to some. Transport is extremely competitive and many will blow their savings on efforts that are destined to fail unless the prepare themselves to succeed.