What is Trucking Business: What You Need To Know?
Trucking, as the name implies, is the business of transporting goods via a truck. Trucking businesses can be extremely profitable; no matter the situation, transportation is always a necessity as it is required to transport goods from one place to another. The American Trucking Associations play a crucial role in supporting logistics and transportation efforts, highlighting the industry's significant contribution to the U.S. economy.
Food? Clothes? Raw Material? Technology? Everything needs to be carried from the place it is manufactured to where its sold and trucks are the most common mode of commercial transportation. Not only does trucking business work inside a country but ts often used to transport good between countries as well. Trucking services are essential in various sectors of the economy, ensuring that almost every product relies on trucks for distribution.
Everything that you are using has been transported via trucks at a certain point. The U.S is highly dependent upon them as more than 70% of the goods are transported via trucks. Furthermore, nearly 6% of full-time jobs in the U.S industry are in the trucking industry.
Stats and Figures about Trucking Business
- U.S trucking business industry is worth billions of dollars
- In the year 2017, revenues generated by the trucking industry in the U.S were higher than the GDP of 150 countries
- Walmart owns around 10,000 trucks
- In the year 2017, 10.8 billion tons of freight was transported via trucks
Shippers are increasingly acting as their own brokers, allowing them to communicate directly with freight companies instead of relying on traditional freight brokers.
The demand for goods never stops, and hence the trucking industry keeps on expanding. Several businesses outsource their freight transportation using full truckload shipments, while huge companies such as Walmart acquire their own trucks. If the long transportation trucks stop moving, grocery stores will run out of things within 3 days.
Operating and freight costs are a crucial aspect for trucking businesses, impacting cash flow management and pricing strategies.
Every industry depends on trucking, from tech companies to retail stores and from food chains to cleaning services. Carpet cleaning Westminster, a professional cleaning service, reported that Trucking is essential for their business because they depend on trucks to deliver cleaning supplies from their vendor. Similarly, the e-retail giant, Amazon, depends on its trucking network to receive and deliver products.
Thinking Of A Career In Trucking? Here's What You Need To Know About Getting A Commercial Driver's License
If you are thinking of starting a career in the trucking field, you need to know the following facts first. To operate large commercial motor vehicles, you will need to obtain a commercial driver's license (CDL). This involves meeting specific requirements and passing various tests, which are crucial for different truck classifications and endorsements. Here's what you need to know about the trucking business:
1. Stress
Before you decide to jump into a career in Trucking, you must fully realize that it is a stressful job. The trucking job involves a lot of responsibility, responsible driving, timely delivery, and keeping up with the deadlines. You have to actively engage with the required people and get things on time. Employment challenges in long-haul trucking, such as an aging workforce and high turnover rates, add to the stress.
No matter if you are a truck driver or the owner of the business, a lot of communication and coordination is required, and sometimes it gets stressful for the person in charge. To ensure steady and smooth execution, you must have good stress management skills and need to know how to work in a stressful situation.
2. Communication and interpersonal skills
Another thing to keep in mind while getting into the trucking business is that you need to have good communication skills. There are a lot of people involved in a trucking business, including several drivers, management staff, clients, etc. hence excellent communication is the key to a successful trucking business. As a business owner, developing a detailed business plan is essential to navigate the complexities of running a trucking business.
- Communicate with the dispatcher and clients
- Sign and form contracts
- Deal with any discrepancy
- You have to develop a relationship of trust among the employees as well as clients
- Efficiently manage all the communication with all sort of people involved in the business and keep the stakeholders informed
3. High Costs, Low Income
As a trucker, one must be aware that he won’t be able to become rich by trucking overnight. F you are working as a truck driver, the hours you put in will only give you a bare minimum. However, it is a great option to start a business and hire truck drivers. Moreover, if you can get trucking contracts from big companies, you get better margins. Owner operators, who dominate the market, can earn substantial weekly incomes ranging from $2,000 to $5,000.
4. Personal Relationships
In the trucking business, your personal life is affected as you are mostly on the road and cannot give yourself or your family enough time. Hence, if you are thinking of starting a career in trucking, you should know that you won’t be home for multiple days.
The job requires a lot of dedication, and often, truck drivers complain about not being able to spend enough time at home.
COVID-19 and the Trucking Industry
Now, coming towards the current situation of COVID-19 and Trucking. Although lockdowns have limited general public movement, truckers are still working because groceries and other necessary items must be delivered at all costs.
This puts truckers at risk of the virus, here are a few tips for the safety and protection of truckers during COVID-19:
1. Keeping The Truck Clean
The surfaces like door handles, staring, and other parts that get in contact can be a source of contamination; hence it is essential to keep those surfaces clean. For a truck driver, before starting to drive the truck, wipe down all the surfaces, including steering wheel, door handles, gear shifter, etc. with a disinfectant.
If you are a solo driver, then you don't need to worry, however, if you are sharing shifts, then both the people must be careful about contact and should use gloves and masks for personal protection.
2. Avoid Bleach In Trucks
According to experts, truckers should only use the recommended list of disinfectants and must avoid the use of bleach in any form. You may get several disinfectants containing bleach in the form of:
- Sprays
- Wipes
- Concentrated solutions
Truckers must avoid these cleaning products as they can damage the truck services. Instead of bleach products, you can use the following cleaning agents:
- Cleaners with Ethanol
- Lysol disinfectants
- Lysol disinfectants spray
- DS1 Signet Neutral Disinfectants
3. Social Distancing
Maintain distance with people in public places and avoid contact as much as possible. You can wash your hands or use a sanitizer immediately after contact and should not spend a lot of time in an enclosed space with multiple people.
- Take general precautions including
- Washing your hands
- Sanitizing the products in the container/ truck
- Avoid touching your face
- Stay at a distance with people, you can take shifts if needed
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