Whether you work as an owner operator or run a large scale trucking business, managing these operations is no mean feat. Assuming your solutions cover a small region or work across multiple states. In that case, you have to pay attention to several aspects, like commercial truck financing and insurance, to maintain your overall quality and profitability.
While performing all of these tasks can seem quite tricky, it is still an achievable goal. You need to know what tools to use to support your operations.
Here are 5 solutions that can take your trucking operations to the next level to help you through the process. By integrating these services into your day to day activities, you can run a more efficient and profitable trucking business in no time.
1. Freight Bill Factoring
When it comes to supporting your trucking business consistently, nothing can beat the mechanism of freight bill factoring. This particular model allows you to turn your unpaid invoices into saleable assets and lets you encash their value even if they are weeks away from their date of fulfillment.
This service is so important because it directly and positively affects the timeline of your revenues tied to your bills of lading (BOLs). Typically, these invoices can take anywhere from 30-90 days to reach fulfillment. Even when you have delivered your loads, your clients can wait until the last day of your invoice’s fulfillment before paying their dues. This mechanism can cause you to run into cash flow problems, which can often hurt your operations.
When you are short on cash, you are unable to meet critical costs that include but are not limited to your fleet’s maintenance, your employees’ payroll, and your overhead expenses. If you don’t have savings or additional assets, this can put your trucking operation on the brink of doom.
But invoice factoring saves you from this grim fate and lets you benefit from your account receivables without having to wait for weeks or months for their fulfillment. By selling your invoices against a nominal fee, you can immediately obtain the funds from your future earnings.
These invoice factoring companies can usually cover 80-90 percent of your invoice’s cash value at the time of purchase. They then wait until the client makes their payment to pay off the remaining amount to you. But you don’t have to run after your clients for them to make their payments, and the fee takes care of the overall transaction itself.
As a result, this factoring becomes an essential part of running a successful trucking operation. No matter the size of your business, it’s critical that you find an invoice factoring company to partner with from time to time.
2. Accounting Software and Solutions
Gone are the days of handling a plethora of paperwork to track the details of your BOLs, employee payroll, and overhead expenses. Now, it’s critical for every trucking operation to digitize its accounting activities and bring everything under a single umbrella.
Fortunately, doing this isn’t impossible at all. With the help of accounting software such as Quickbooks, you can easily keep track of all your finances without having to rummage through countless filing cabinets. These solutions also come in mobile apps, which let you be on top of your transactions even when you are on the road yourself.
Accounting software makes sure that you can keep track of your incoming funds and your outgoing expenses. This allows you to manage your finances in a better manner. As such, you don’t have to go through a plethora of paperwork each time you need to refer to a financial transaction.
This particular aspect shines through in your day to day to activities frequently. Apart from helping you make crucial budgeting and business decisions, it also lets you go through critical tasks such as tax accounting with the utmost ease. This makes sure that you don’t have to add more stress to your plate during tax season, especially when working on managing loads for your clients.
In case you don’t want to manage these records by yourself or don’t have an in-house accountant, you can also hire an external bookkeeper to help you set up and maintain your accounts. In many cases, this can also bring down the costs of buying these applications in the first place and lets the external bookkeeper handle this requirement from their end.
3. Gas Discount Cards
Gas discount cards are credit cards that carry rewards against gas-based transactions. To elaborate, each time you use these cards at a gas station, you can expect them to add a certain level of discount to your overall expense.
Since gas discount cards offer moderate discounts at each transaction, they may seem like a small benefit to the everyday driver. But when you use them to support your work activities as a trucker or owner-operator practically, they become an integral part of your day to day operations.
By getting the right types of gas discount cards and issuing them to all the drivers of your fleet, you can make sure to save a massive amount of funds through your day-to-day freight management.
Gas discount cards are available in partnership with several gas stations, banks, and financial services providers. This makes it easy for you to obtain these cards and access the discounts that they offer. With that, the more choices you have, the trickier it becomes to make the right selection.
That’s where you can make use of your shopping skills. By reaching out to different gas discount card providers, you can note down their overall discounts, rewards, as well as interest rates. You can then compare various providers’ offerings and pick a solution that serves your needs the best.
This mechanism is prevalent in the trucking industry and regularly used by owner-operators and large-scale freight businesses managers. As long as you are careful about managing these cards’ interest rates in comparison to the discount rates offered by them, they can be a highly beneficial tool.
4. Telematics and Fleet Management Solutions
Trucking services and navigation tracking goes hand in hand. Whether you operate a couple of trucks or run a more extensive fleet, it’s not incorrect to assume that you may already have the latest Global Positioning System (GPS) solutions installed within your vehicles. But efficient trucking businesses take measures that go deeper than this essential requirement.
As such, these solutions use telematics along with GPS navigation. Simply put, telematics refers to the use of automotive technology with computer technology to collect and use essential data about your vehicle. When used in the context of trucking, this method looks into aspects such as location tracking, speed management, and vehicle management.
When you use telematics with a proper fleet management program, your trucking solutions can keep tabs on your vehicles’ location and performance. This makes sure that you can stay up to date on your fleet’s health and maintenance as well as your drivers’ performance and handling. This also makes it easier for you to take corrective measures such as scheduling inspections for your trucks and issuing notices to drivers who violate safety guidelines.
This gives you a firm grasp over your critical operations and lets you ensure that even when your vehicles are miles away from you, you can effectively manage them from your business’ headquarters.
Telematics are typically available in the latest trucks by default. Whereas fleet management solutions are also easily accessible through different providers. This makes sure that you don’t have to face any hurdles while benefiting from these solutions.
5. Preventative Maintenance Programs
Preventative maintenance (PM) is a crucial part of every efficient trucking business. Regardless of the size of your fleet, PM programs make sure that all the vehicles under your banner remain free of any issues and maintain optimal upkeep.
These PM programs can often follow the inspection recommendations by your vehicle’s manufacturer and the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of its components. However, they may also put their schedule in place to ensure that your trucks are running in ideal condition at all times.
Apart from inspection, these programs also help you get urgent repairs or replacements for critical parts of your trucks. For instance, if your vehicle shows any problems with its brakes during an inspection, your PM program provider can work towards fixing the issue without any delay.
PM programs are considered a critical aspect of any trucking operation. They become even more active and vital when you combine them with optimal telematics and fleet management solutions. This lets you send in your vehicles for inspection, maintenance, and repair at the slightest chance of trouble, ensuring that they don’t run into any more significant problems.
Overall, PM services ensure that your vehicle doesn’t create any problems on the road. This makes way towards ensuring the overall safety of your drivers, fleet, and any other cars or pedestrians that they interact with during their trips.
These programs are available through different statewide and nationwide automotive services providers. By enrolling with the right partner, you can always get your fleet the service it deserves and requires at its most critical times.
By keeping these tips in mind, you can ensure to get the most out of your trucking business like this article about penske truck lease cost. From financial management to maintenance tracking, these services allow you to run a tight ship that spells nothing but success in the long run.
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