Business Plan/ Mentor Needed

Thanks for a great reply, but I am lost. 3 of the trucks are parked...hope to have them running early next month. Before maintenance we save around 800 a week per truck.
What you are saying if to save enough money and then come up with a place? My father has made all decisions until past year when he fell ill. He isn't working at the moment and we need to take money out of company to survive.

 

Wonderful!.

Thank you for your motivational words. I am working hard but will work harder to make this work.

 

The biggest problem we are facing is drivers. We pay to incorporation and many times drivers would show Interest, take orientation and then just disappear. We pay a companies rate.

Just an example, we have a great load for containers, its a daily run and driver cones home every night. How ever the pickup of container is from 2-3 different places and some times would take 1- 1 and half hour. Druver complain about this a lot.
For this load we get 1.26/mile with around 7cents off fuel. We pay drivers 0.41 cpm Canadian.

Just need some strategies to hire and retain drivers

 

Wow I can see a lot of things where you are losing money.

First things first, finding drivers is a PIA. I mean it. I hate interveiwing driver and then having to deal with stupid issues that they come up with - like my dog ate my CDL thing.

I hate this too, they go through half of the process and then dissappear. Or apply at multiple place, run a couple of times and then choose what they like.

When you find good people, offer them an incentive, I do the "here is a percentage of the run" thing, they agree to it but I also don't play games with them, if they are entitled to something, they get it even if it means I lost money. The other thing is I let them pick and chose their work, it makes me more money but I understand you have a dedicated which I will touch on in a moment.

For the truck running U.S, the dedicated run changed into Midwest. Now I am looking for driver to do that run. What kind of incentive do you provide other than percentage of the work? I am thinking either $0.44 + HST + 1 cent bonus every six months. Or something like $0.40 + a percentage of After fuel pay.

One thing I learned is I will never ever pay someone hourly, it is a losing battle with retention, they only see the bottom line then and it sometimes makes people sour over any disputes. better to keep an incentive alive and let them deal with some of the issues to make them part of the "team".

There is great work here for Containers and they pay percentage base. I would love to add a truck there but cannot figure out a compensation package.

The second thing is I would find a good broker to deal with for cross border work, and I don't mean at $1.X a mile, but something in the $2 a mile PLUS thing. We were doing cross border work at $4 a mile because we were running for a company who had a good contract and the odd thing is the other company I have a truck on with got the contract when it expired then offered that truck (remember different company) the same run for $4.5 a mile - go figure that. Well the driver jumped on it, and he did that for 16 months before the customer move production back to the states.

With the dedicated work, are you running empty at all? I mean if you are, pick up something for the return trip to pad that DH miles to either reduce the costs or produce a profit.

I do run empty, especially with containers going to the port. I never thought I could monetize that in any way

Ever think of using multiple companies to lease to so to keep the trucks moving?

I thought about this, but I am leased on to one company. They pay for plates and everything, how can I lease on to multiples?

 

Hey Guys, I will be moving one of the truck and have it dispatched myself. I want to run it local to within Ontario/Quebec short haul. What are some of the things to consider beside the legal/paper work?

 

Bumping this up to see if someone could guide me.