How To Grow Your Trucking Business
If you’re a small trucking business owner, you know it can be difficult competing with the larger fleets. There’s advantages to having more trucks, like offering more aggressive pricing, hiring more drivers, and getting better discounts from suppliers. But what can you do to grow your company to compete with these larger ones?
- Providing the best service you can and use it to your advantage.
This one sounds easy, but sometimes the little things really do pay off. Since you’re smaller, you’re nimble, you’re ready to work, and you have fewer clients. Treat each client like they’re the most important one you have and they will continue to come back to you. The key is to create relationships, not clients.
- Set your plan for growth at a reasonable pace.
Sit down and figure out what you’d like to do to grow your business. Then, using your company’s data, calculate how much capital you’ll need to reach your goals. Don’t forget to calculate how long reaching these goals will take. It’s important to be reasonable when setting these goals, because if you set unattainable goals with very short time frames, you’ll most likely end up being disappointed.
- Understand what truck load boards are and how to use them.
Truck load boards, sometimes called freight boards,are a great way for your company to find loads. Fleet owners and truckers use these boards to search for loads that need to be moved. This could be helpful if you’re looking for more loads to generate more cash for your growth plans.
- Stabilize your cash flow and get fast access to working capital.
A pretty decent cost comes along with delivering a load, but freight invoices often go unpaid until well after the date of delivery. Larger companies don’t need to worry about this, but if you’re a smaller fleet, you often find yourself needing cash quickly to fuel your trucks and pay your driver. The solution? Freight factoring. With factoring, a third-party factor purchases your outstanding invoices. You then get a cash advance on the balance of the factored invoice, minus a small percentage taken by the factor as a fee for their service. They take on the collections duties and get you the cash you’re owed quickly, rather than you having to wait until the job is completed (and sometimes beyond that). Many other benefits come along with factoring. At CoreFund Capital, we also offer an EFS fuel card service, free invoice auditing, and complimentary client credit checks.
There are tons of other ways to grow your trucking business, don’t be afraid to get creative and set yourself apart from the crowd in a positive way. These tips are just a few of the considerations we think are important to think about when you want to start your growth. Check back on our blog for more tips and tricks for growing your business, creating more working capital, and more!