We know driving a trucking business to success is not as simple as it may seem. There are just about a hundred things you need to consider and another hundred that pile up as soon as you finish up with the earlier ones.
Whether you are an experienced fleet owner or an independent driver who’s just starting with a trucking business, your role is extremely significant to the country’s economy, facilitating the movement of goods and services over long distances. Moreover, it’s a unique lifestyle on its own. But scaling, managing, and earning profit from a fleet of trucks is not without its challenges. These could be anything from fuel price volatility to supply chain disruptions, infrastructural bottlenecks, driver training, the safety of your cargo, regulatory compliance, financial constraints, and much more. There’s no doubt that every trucker grapples with these challenges. But there’s a solution to every problem. Here are some tips that could help you run your trucking business and stay competitive in the current business environment.
Monitor Your Spendings
Business growth is often co-related to the investments made towards achieving it. For instance, you could have hired a driver or brought a new commercial truck to fulfil your last-mile delivery needs. Whatever your spendings are, keeping track of them is crucial for effective fleet management. By keeping detailed track of the cash inflows and the outflows, from fuel expenses to maintenance costs and salaries, you can identify your expenses, and implement cost-saving strategies accordingly. Moreover, pre-allocating a dedicated budget to each expense can also help in keeping your spending in check and ensuring you don’t overspend.
Use Fuel Saving Techniques
Out of all the expenses, fuel is likely the biggest expense in the trucking business. While there’s no getting around or avoiding purchasing fuel, as a fleet owner, it is important to know how to manage these costs effectively and find smart ways to save on fuel costs. In addition to investing in fuel-efficient trucks, encouraging better driving practices can be very helpful. Besides that, fuel credit cards are also a great option if you want more control over your and your driver’s fuel spending. These cards work on a specific network of fueling stations and allow drivers to fuel their vehicles without spending a single amount for fuel. Instead, the expenses are accumulated and need to be paid on a future date. Much like a credit card, these revolving credit facilities have been useful for fleet owners to track fuel expenses and their drivers’ fueling habits and save substantially on the upfront cost of fueling their vehicles, thus, impacting their bottom line.
Hire Drivers Carefully
Hiring the right employee can contribute a lot to the growth of your business. Drivers are the face of a trucking business. They are the ones your customers will be interacting with. They are also the ones you trust to make good judgments when it comes to deliveries and serving your customers. Therefore, always remember that hiring the right drivers can make all the difference. Look for drivers with the necessary skills and experience to make deliveries. But also make sure they are easy to train, eager for feedback, eager to learn, and change habits that can benefit the business. Their personality traits, responsibility-holding capacity, and commitment to safety are some other aspects you should consider.
Safeguard Your Cargo
Protecting your goods eventually becomes second nature to seasoned drivers and fleet owners. These goods could be the supplies you need to deliver. Cargo theft and damage to vehicles is a genuine concern among fleet owners. it can result in financial losses and may even tarnish the reputation you’ve built over time and worked hard for. In addition to picking drivers carefully, investing in advanced safety measures such as GPS tracking, training drivers, and making preventative maintenance a priority can be extremely beneficial.
Buy New Trucks, But Invest Smart
Adding to your fleet has multiple benefits.
In today’s competitive business landscape, staying ahead of the curve and fulfilling customer needs requires a robust lineup of trucks. Be it a semi or small and light-duty pickup truck, your fleet business will likely need an addition sooner or later. This expense does not involve just the price of the vehicle but ownership and maintenance costs also associated with it. And while these expenses are unavoidable, it pays to prepare beforehand.
To ease this working capital requirement, many fleet owners opt to finance their purchases from banks and NBFCs at attractive loan terms.
Say you are buying a semi-truck. A loan will allow you to get funds, address your cash flow, and enable you to spread out the cost of the vehicle over time. But, choosing the right financing option is imperative for maintaining financial stability and driving your business forward. To make better decisions, compare different options, terms and repayment schedules, eligibility requirements, and interest rates when applying for a semi-truck loan. Also, to ensure the semi-truck loan meets your financing goals and capacity for returns, utilise online tools like an EMI calculatorand make informed decisions.
