It seems like every day we are reading about another trucking company closing its doors after 50 years in the business. This year alone, we have witnessed LME, Starlite Trucking, and Falcon Transport (to name a few) all perish unexpectedly. But why is this happening? In short… the costs of doing business have gone up substantially.
We are now living in a world of increased wages to drivers, increased insurance rates, and more expensive equipment. To add accelerant to the fire, many state’s standards for emissions have become increasingly strict forcing trucking companies to buy newer equipment sooner than originally planned.
In the past 3 years alone, the price of diesel fuel has gone up 50% costing trucking companies millions and cutting about $0.25 more per mile from their bottom line.
To top everything off, trucking companies are also forced to run on inflexible schedules due to the recent ELD mandate.
So how is a trucking company supposed to survive in a world of increased costs? In today’s market, if you want to endure, you have to run your trucking company more efficiently than ever before.
The companies that are able to increase margins by streamlining every process they have will thrive and the ones that do things the old way will surely meet an untimely demise.
Find solutions that allow you to visualize and analyze your entire operation and you will be able to quickly discover where you are losing out on profits.
Here are a few examples on how having proper visibility and data could help you:
- Say you have data on how much time one of your trucks is not being utilized. You can now use this truck to cover more loads instead of buying a 2nd truck. This enables the best ROI on your purchased equipment and when scaled properly, this turns into major savings.
- Say you are able to visualize where all your trucks are in proximity to your next pick-up location. You will be able to quickly choose the right truck for the job saving in not only fuel costs, but internal costs in planning out the load.
In both examples. having that insight will save you money and make you more successful… remember data is king.
When we started building out own VIA transportation management platform, we set out with the goal of creating technology that would help trucking companies with cutting costs. The examples listed above are only a few of the robust features we built into our platform and we continue to add to our product every day. We have helped hundreds of companies (large and small) maximize profits and we would love to show you what we can do for you. If you’re worried about surviving the trucking apocalypse, reach out to us, perhaps we can help.
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