cannot understand

Excellent post!

 

it's just people who are willing to learn and those that aren't. Any truck driver can shave, put on khaki pants, and talk about capacity instead of how many trucks he has, start saying logistics instead of trucking, yada, yada.

I'm joking, but there is kind of a "business oriented" segment of the trucking industry that's nothing but a bunch of recent business school grads who don't have a clue themselves. They'd do themselves a favor to learn a little trucking. Learn to communicate with drivers instead of talking down to them.

I worked for three different companies ran by drivers turned businessmen, all solid companies. One of them the bossman was getting older while I was there. He had built up a 40 truck strong fleet. But he still had his old Emeryville that he would hook to a dump trailer and haul gravel from time to time. That guy knew more about the trucking business than 1,000 TQL brokers put together, and 10X as much as some of these so-called master groups on facebook. A pair of businessmen bought that company after the old man died. They ran it into the ground in 15 years and sold out to US Express. And they were GREAT businessmen, very successful in several different ventures. They probably should have learned a thing or two about trucking instead of assuming it wasn't worth knowing.

A truckdriver can learn business if he wants, it's not some mystical lost art. Sometimes the business minded folks are so set on applying their skill set to trucking they forget to learn their business. Trucking is very unique, not to say someone with good business skills can't apply them to trucking, but if they don't also recognize they have a lot to learn, they are going to severely limit themselves in this industry.

 

Gunner: You'll run into 1,000 obstacles while starting a business in any field. To be successful, you need to be pretty stubborn and have the ability to presevere.

But you'll also need to do the right things to make money -- you can't just go on operating at a loss. Know your numbers, know the business, and work hard to improve them every day.

As a company driver, I kept a record of every fuel-up & every service done to my truck. After a year, I had a decent idea of the costs of operating a truck. Then I started my own operation trying to have the absolute lowest costs possible, and from there I've mainly worked on increasing revenue.

I still believe that is a good approach to enter the field -- you should be able to survive most any market if your operating costs are lower then the competition, but when you can combine low cost with high revenue wonderful things happen.

 

I've started and run several businesses outside trucking, some successful and some not. Two things stick out in my mind regarding why most folks who start a business fail:

Lack of capital - if you have enough money to buy a truck and maybe a few thousand left over to run things "until the money starts pouring in", then you are almost guaranteed to fail. You are one blown head gasket from being in the saddle without a horse under it. It never ceases to amaze me when I talk to newer O/O's and ask them how much they are setting aside for their Maintenance Reserve Account and they've either never heard of that term or reply with something like, "I don't have to set aside money for maintenance, the truck tells me when it will need money". Personally, I'd never become an O/O unless my MRA was at least $15K to $20K, enough to handle a major repair.

Treating settlement check like a paycheck - time and again the O/O's that seem to be on the brink of financial ruin are also the ones that are talking up about how much money they are making, but when you pry into it a little more you soon find out they aren't setting anything aside for their MRA or building any kind of savings. They're the ones buying expensive new cars with big payments or other "toys" they've just got to take time off to enjoy. They AREN'T paying themselves a salary and putting the balance into a business account, it ALL goes into their personal account. They never seem to wrap their minds around the concept of running their BUSINESS as if they had hired another driver to drive their truck, making a profit on top of what they pay the DRIVER. Instead they are simply buying an expensive job.

Lack of a business plan - "A businessman without a business plan has no business being in business". You have to know what YOUR business is all about and have a vision for the future, some goals, and know whether you are on track to achieve those goals. For some folks it's about saving to buy a farm for a second income, for others it's about building a fleet. Unless you know what you want from your business and are keeping score you are apt to start spending all the sales without knowing you are eating into the expense side of the business and you are going to end up in trouble in a hurry. Trucking has a unique way of blowing up in your face in a hurry, because if you are reliant on a single expensive asset being in workable condition 100% of the time IN ORDER TO GENERATE REVENUE then you had better realize that the only insurance policy you have to make sure that happens is to have sufficient funds set aside for getting repairs and maintenance done without having to go beg for money.