How to scale up a trucking business.

You are not mediocre. For the very reason you spend time on this website learning about the trucking industry puts you above the rest of your counterparts who seek average lives. If you want to scale up your position in this industry, it is possible with hard work and the correct resources such as this website. I believe there are three stages to scaling up your position in the trucking industry and they are Driving, Owner-Operator, and then Freight Broker. I would like to dive into the best resources for each and provide the mindset it takes to go from one stage to the next.


1) Driving

This website is a great resource from the time you are thinking about acquiring a CDL to the time you are capable of safely driving in any locale, weather condition, and have no trouble maneuvering or backing a tractor-trailer to any conceivable spot. YouTube is another great resource of what not to do as a driver. Watch as many hilarious and tragic videos as possible on YouTube as they will make you a better driver.

2) Owner-OP

You can only scale up your income as a driver so much until it stops going up. Beyond 5 years of experience, it gets harder and harder to find any opportunity that pays any more income. The only way to scale up from being just a mere driver is taking an ownership stake in the business. You’re not a true driver until you can handle a truck in any condition, and you’re not a true owner-op until you own your truck, trailer, and authority. From being a lease-op to owner op to fleet owner to a small trucking company this website has plenty of great resources of how to make it happen. There are also other great resources listed below that can guide you through this stage.

OOIDA (http://www.ooida.com/)
NASTC (http://www.nastc.com/)
AITA (http://aitaonline.com/)
SCRA (http://www.scranet.org/)

3) Freight Broker

You can own as many assets as you want but it will become harder and harder to scale up those assets if you don’t own the revenue that is providing cash flow to those assets. You need to learn how to sell freight. You have 6 trucks but land a contract you don’t have the capacity to fill. What do you do? You broker the freight to other carriers if your assets lack the capacity to fulfill the contract. Transportation is multi-model and dynamic. You can sell ocean, rail, air, and trucking freight to fulfill your customers’ needs and get a piece of that Union Pacific pie rather than being annoyed at intermodal containers replacing long haul truck loads. As far as resources on how to sell freight. Consider this, there are more resources out there about selling and the logistics industry than anything about being a driver or owner-op combined. Bookstores have entire sections of books that give useful advice on sales. Trade associations, shows, and journals are other excellent resources to learn the 3PL industry. My favorite are,

JOC (http://www.joc.com/)
APICS (http://www.apics.org/)
TIA (http://www.tianet.org/)

I got my start in the transportation industry being an airline baggage handler at 18. Worked my way up while in college to gate/ticketing agent, then airport operations, then airline dispatch. After spending a number of years in the airline industry I finally grew bored as my life was not growing. I saw trucking as a way to start my own transportation business and have transferred the passion I had in aviation to the trucking industry. Consider these people. Fred Smith founded FEDEX in 1971, it is now a business valued at $40 billion. Gianluigi Aponte founded MSC in 1970 with one ship and grew his net worth to $5 billion. Ken Oaks founded TQL in 1997, Ken Oaks is now a billionaire and TQL is now the second largest freight broker in North America. Scale to vast proportions is possible in one lifetime, you just need a passion to learn about the transportation industry and have a commitment to hard work.

 

You probably have a problem with non-asset based brokers, so do I. Almost all physical commerce begins and ends with a truck. We have the power to sell freight better than those non-asset based brokers. Why people in trucking don't make an effort to sell their trade is a mystery to me.