Guidelines for finishing your trucking business plan.
By Timothy Brady

In the last post I discussed the details necessary to assemble your business’s financial data. While these profit and loss projections, balance sheets, budgets and cash flow expectations are important, they represent only part of the information required to map out your success. In this post, I’m going to discuss the other components of a business plan.

This is where your financial data comes into play. A good plan requires the right data, details about your vision, forethought of how you’re going to implement these ideas and continuing self-evaluation. Taking a dream to certainty requires several doses of reality along the way.

Here are the components of a trucking business plan:

Determine your personal net worth.
A relatively simple task of adding up your financial assets (cash, bank account(s), savings, stock, bonds, etc. and the value of tangible objects you own) and subtracting what you owe (credit card balances, mortgage, auto loans, personal loans, taxes, etc.). This tells you if you can afford to start a trucking business. If you start from behind the eight ball, that’s where you will most likely finish.

Your Trucking Company’s Business Concept and Objectives
What type of trucking operation (flatbed, refrigerated, truckload, LTL, etc.)? Where will      you operate (48 states, regional, local, specific corridor)? How many trucks will you start with? How many will you add? Extend this two, three, and five years out in setting your goals.

Trucking Business Trends and Overview:
What is the expected growth of the industry segment you’re planning on servicing? Who are your direct competitors? Is there a special niche you’re planning on filling, or are you going to be one of the pack? Who are the leaders in this segment? How are you going to compete with them? (If your answer is ‘price,’ stop right here, because you are most likely fooling yourself. Competing on price alone won’t keep you in business for very long.) The most important question: Will there be enough loads at a reasonable rate to insure you will meet financial objectives?

Specialty Niche:
What’s setting you apart from the rest of the pack? What is your cutting-edge idea for improving service to your shippers? How will you implement this idea?

Strength and Weakness Analysis:
How will you measure up to others hauling the same tonnage? Who are your primary competitors? Secondary competitors?  Know how you rank with your competitors and you’ll know how to deal with them.

Marketing Strategy:
How are you going to let potential customers know you exist? (Are you doing all the cold-calling, selling and follow-up? Or are you relying on a trucking company or broker for these services?)  How are you going to communicate with current customers to keep them loyal? What is the total market share available in the segment of the freight industry you plan to service? What amount of market penetration are you intending to achieve in the first, second, third year and so on? What market share do you need to reach financial goals during each of these periods? What is it going to cost in advertising, public relations and promotions to attain this market share? Or, what are the costs of a trucking company or broker handling the sales and follow-up?

Did I mention it’s a whole lot less expensive to make mistakes during the planning process than to find out you can’t generate the required revenue in the niche you’ve chosen to support the cost of doing business? Writing a business plan and your continual evaluation of its details will provide the ability to see mistakes before you actually make them. You’d never start a load without detailed directions including how to get where you’re going and rechecking those directions along the way. Just as weather, road construction, or a more efficient means to arrive at your destination is the effect of mapping your trip and evaluating it along the way, your business plan becomes the process where you avoid the pitfalls of financial downturns, increased costs, or changing environment of the niche you’ve selected.

You wouldn’t roll down the road without knowing where you are headed; why would you not do the same when you jump on the highway of business? Invest your time before you devote your hard-earned dollars to your own business. It will be an investment you’ll never regret.

Good roads and great loads, everyone.

Timothy D. Brady ©2010
www.timothybrady.com