I know from personal experience and talking to many business owners in trucking that they work very hard within their businesses and they find it hard to find enough time to work on their businesses. It is very easy to get caught up in the minutia of the day-to-day task required to keep a business functioning there are many moving parts that all need attention. I ran a small fleet many years ago that grew from three trucks to fifty trucks, over a six years period; I was the main operations person along with being the main salesperson, scheduled maintenance person, billing clerk etc. I was also the goto person for all other major decisions concerning the business. This not only puts a lot of pressure on a person it also leaves a big gap in between being functional in your business with average results and being a high performing company with outstanding results.

I was most comfortable in the operations aspect and in servicing the company’s largest accounts. In retrospect those were good areas to have passion for, but every area in a trucking company needs to be operating at a high level of performance or I guarantee there will be money blown out the stacks! Until now there were really no tools available to assist in knowing where your company was weak or strong, what you had was the one overall number, was there profit and if so how much. Your banker can tell you whether you’re in the ballpark for profitability of the other trucking companies that they might bank around the country, but that is the fifty thousand foot view at best, so check out www.Stakup.com

I know the same situation exist for owner operators, what they do best is drive, and possibly, if their luck they can also twist wrenches on their own truck. It takes so much more to be successful though. Some time ago recorded a set of 10 videos with Truck News and to my surprise they have accumulated over 100,000 hits, you can find them at, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpstbwKeCQ8

Safe Trucking

Ray Haight