Every ambitious trucking startup needs to begin building its business. This can be vital when carving out a definite future path for your business, building customer retention, and experimenting with things that can help you to build a better company. There might be no end of strategies and techniques you could explore, but you should probably use these four as a foundation.
#1 Look out for extra work
Looking out for extra work on directories can have multiple benefits for your startup. This can help you get shipping work by using directories like Shiply, and it can help you build up work quickly and fill up loads, which can make your driver’s journeys more worthwhile, especially if you are considering taking on a longer haul. This might seem like an obvious thing to start with, but the important thing to do is to target job boards with a diverse number of jobs so you can find exactly what you are looking for easily
#2 Find a good niche
Using that technique, you should be able to do most of the general shipping jobs out there without too much hassle. This can help you to build a good idea of what you might be better at or certain drivers’ specialties. This can be really beneficial for your business, as it can mean that you can begin to offer specialist trucking services, such as electronics, fragile items, and antiques, which can broaden your audience. This can be beneficial to your company in the long run, as you can charge more for specialist work. Of course, whatever your specialty, you will need to ensure full compliance, recording all necessary data such as the miles driven, any additions to your fleet, and related safety information on your mcs-150 form as requested by the FMCSA.
#3 Focus on your marketing
You are going to need to put time, money, and effort into your marketing. As a startup, you might not have the funds to hire an outsourced marketing department, so you might just be stuck with a couple of rookies learning as they go. This can be really beneficial, however, as you can train them, have them working on your social media, and get some of your more enthusiastic truckers in on the action, too, creating stories as they go cross-country.
#4 Don’t forget communication
You should really be working on building your communication from early on. This can boost customer satisfaction and employee safety, and it can also help to keep things more organized and efficient. If people know what is happening, they are going to be more prepared, and this can lead to a really impressive leap in customer loyalty and retention.
To wrap everything up
Every ambitious trucking startup needs to begin somewhere – and thankfully, in the trucking industry, there are a lot of places where you can start. This includes finding an appropriate niche to start training your drivers in or working towards building your marketing department. Or you might feel that communication is far more important to work on first, and you are experimenting with some ways to build that up. Lastly, you might be looking to find ways to fill up your loads to make sure that your trucks are as full as possible, so you might be looking in directories to make sure that you are getting the most out of every tank of gas.