If you have decided to get into the trucking business and are not sure where to begin, then you have stumbled on the right blog. The trucking industry is on the rise because more than 70% of the freight in the USA is transported through trucks. Investing in a trucking company is a smart decision and can give your excellent profits if done right.
Starting your own trucking company is exciting, but it is not an easy task by any means. From securing funding and developing a business plan to meeting legal requirements like getting a motor carrier authority number, you have to take care of a lot of things to start a successful trucking company. It is a business that promises great returns, but not everyone can do it.
If you want to start a successful trucking company, you must create a strategy and stick to it. The more disciplined you are with your strategy, the better results you will see. In this article, I have mentioned a few important things you need to follow to start a successful trucking company. Let’s take a look:
Pick a name and choose a target market
In the first stage of planning, what you need to do is choose a name for your company and pick a niche that you are going to target.
Coming up with the right name is important because it gives your business identity and defines your brand. It is advised that you put thought into your company name and choose it wisely. Define your brand and make sure that the name matches it. There are plenty of online tools out there that can help you brainstorm names and come up with ideas.
You also need to pick a niche for which you will be offering your carrier services. Don’t be an all-in-one company because that approach works only if you have a massive budget. If you are targeting one industry, you will have a defined target audience and fewer competitors.
Create business plan
The next thing you need to do is create a business plan because without it won’t have any way of ensuring that everything is running smoothly.
Define the extent of your services and the rates you will be charging. Dive deeper into your budget and define where the money will go and how long it will take you to generate ROI. You need to keep the smallest of things in mind while devising a business plan because it is extremely critical. Your business plan must have the following elements:
- Company description
- Vision statement
- Market analysis
- Financial Projections
- Marketing strategy
- Selling strategy
- Operations and Management plan
Meet the legal requirements
Before you start offering your services, you will have to meet the legal requirements defined for trucking businesses.
A commercial driver’s license is not the only thing you need to run a trucking company. There are certain conditions defined by FMCSA that you need to meet at all costs if you want to run a trucking business. The conditions you need to meet includes:
- Applying for USDOT number
- Applying for motor carrier authority (MC) number
- International Registration Plan – License Plate
- Highway tax return
- IFTA Permit
- ELG – Electronic Logging Devices
- SCAC
Failing to meet requirements could result in hefty fines from the FMCSA, so you must not take it lightly.
Funding your trucking business
One of the most important parts is to acquire funds for your business, but before you do that, you need to learn how much you would be spending in total.
To start a trucking business, you need an investment capital ranging between $10,000 and $40,000, depending on your business’s scale. If you have the savings that you can use for this business, that’s ideal, but if not, there are other ways you can try. You can use your home equity credit line or can simply apply for a loan.
Hire wisely
One of the biggest challenges of running a trucking company is to hire and retain good drivers. Finding good drivers is a challenge alone, and you need to treat them right to ensure that they stick with you. That is why you must set a proper procedure for recruitment instead of hiring anyone you can find.
Go for candidates that have good experience and will stick with you for the long term.
Share
Contributors
