Guaranteed way to increase the profitability of your trucking company by 100%.
Click here to see how joining the Relay Network guarantees more profitability.
Why is your trucking company not as profitable as it can be or how can you make it more profitable?
The typical reasons/causes most people site for low profitability are; Low freight rates, crappy brokers, high diesel prices, rising expense costs (tires, insurance, etc).
There are three areas that impact your profitability, but nobody typically mentions the third. The three areas are…
- Freight Rates and Load availability
- Expenses and Costs
- Asset Utilization (how many miles or loads your truck does in a week or month).
All three are equally critical to the success of your trucking company. The first two have many resources for trucking companies to work with. However asset utilization is rarely actively pursued because there has not been any easy way to drastically improve it, until now.
1.) To get Better Freight Rates and Loads– Use subscriptions to Load boards like DAT, or employ a sales team.
-Problem; Limited control of how you can impact this…100% of freight rates is driven by supply and demand.
2. To Lower Expenses and Costs – Track in quickbooks, utilize multiple discount fuel cards, shop multiple vendors to find the best deals (cheaper insurance and tire discounts).
– Problem; Limited control of how you can impact this… mainly driven by inflation and global issues.
In this current market coupled with the limited control your trucking company has over freight rates and expenses, asset utilization is actually the most important area to improve profitability. It’s not a luxury, it’s a matter of survival.
Let me show you how 100s of trucking companies are doubling their asset utilization and exponentially increasing their profits!
3. The most important for profitability in this market, Better asset utilization – How do you increase the number of revenue generating loads or miles your truck runs in a week or month? The limiting factor has always been drivers and how much and how often your drivers are willing to work. In most unprofitable trucking companies, the driver is typically in control of the asset utilization. The driver determines when he takes time off, when he wants to go to work, while the government determines how long he can work for with HOS.
Every time the driver wants time off for personal or needs time off due to HOS, your truck does what? It sits and your asset utilization suffers drastically. In any given month, the best most hardworking driver can only utilize your truck 20-22 days. Essentially, at best your truck will sit doing nothing 1 in every 4 weeks throughout the year. That’s assuming your driver never takes additional time off, vacations, or quits without notice leaving your trucks sitting additional weeks while you try to find a replacement driver. The lack of control on this most important part of your company is typically what causes most trucking companies to go under.
In reality, when you add it all up by the end of the year by factoring in additional driver time off/vacations and downtime when in between drivers your truck typically sits 2 out of every 4 weeks! That’s only a 50% asset utilization! Imagine if you could double that and do twice as many revenue generating loads for each of your trucks every month, every year.
- Your profitability would instantly sky rocket
- Growing your revenue would mean you don’t need to go out and buy more expensive overpriced trucks.
- More importantly, Your company will be in a much better place as you would have full control of your asset utilization.
Essentially today, 1/3 of your business’s profitability is not in your hands or control. Your drivers own you in this. In the past, the only solution has been team drivers, but there are significant drawbacks with this approach and it’s become outdated.
- It’s extremely hard to find and keep drivers willing to drive team. Most drivers simply do not like or care to live in the close confines of a box, bouncing and rolling down the highway every time they try and sleep, while they have to trust someone else with their life. That’s why only husband and wives are team drivers nowadays and even they grow tired of being stuck together 24/7.
- Freight rates typically don’t support the additional cost of two drivers at a time. There was a time when there were lots of (oh crap we ran out stock loads) shippers would need and pay extra big time money to get a load shipped ASAP (especially in the produce and reefer markets). Nowadays, companies like Walmart, Amazon, and other major shippers have excellent smart logistics programs that plan and manage the timing of freight shipments to a tee. That’s why today if you use load boards for your loads, then you’ll find very few team loads worth it. And if you have direct customers, many do not want to pay additional costs for team drivers nor do they need them.
- Additionally, team drivers still need time off, take vacations, and quit leaving your truck sitting more than its rolling throughout the year.
So with team drivers you may take one step forward in asset utilization, but two steps backwards in Expenses and Costs when having to two driver costs at the same time.
I’m going to give you the solution to get full control of your asset utilization, double the number of revenue generating loads you can do per truck, and unlock the untapped potential of increasing your profitability by 100%!
Ready…… Relay On Demand. Get full control of your asset utilization by utilizing our network of over 2,000 drivers available to dispatch at your fingertips.
With Relay, you are no longer bound and a prisoner of your drivers needs and wants.
- Shift your thinking from – I can only book loads my drivers want to do as they won’t run at night, or go to that city, needs time off, etc. – to, I can book loads anywhere, for anytime that makes the most sense for my truck’s profitability.
- Plan your loads around your truck schedule vs your drivers schedules. As soon as your truck returns from a trip, instead of waiting for your driver to be ready to go back out, you have another driver hop right in and turn the truck back around on another trip same day.
Essentially, Relay enables you to more than double your asset utilization by ensuring you always have a fresh ready to roll driver available 24/7, 365 days a year.
Let me show you how easy it becomes to book drivers based on your truck schedule and take full control of your asset utilization by using the Relay app.
I always say…Carriers come for the great drivers, but stay for the profitability.
I know I’ve probably blew your mind as you’ve probably haven’t spent much time before thinking you can improve your profitability by taking full control of your asset utilization. It’s a new way of thinking and Relay is a new tool to put to work for you. But don’t worry, we have a full support team to help you shift gears and go the next level. We help you strategize on building a profitable truck schedule that doubles your profitability and create the network of drivers that makes it happen for you. You can collaborate one on one with your Relay Carrier success manager to discuss profitable lanes based on data from all the carriers on the network and how they’ve used Relay to boost their revenue and profitability.
The freight market has shifted away from its peak making it more important than ever to improve your asset utilization. If you don’t take control of your asset utilization, you have a high likelihood of failing. Here’s why it’s important with lower freight rates and margins to offset that by increasing your asset utilization.
By increasing your asset utilization, you can maintain peak market profitability even as freight rates decline. When you see it like this, it’s a no brainer. Go sign up today.
Click here to see how joining the Relay Network guarantees more profitability.
Published Dec 18th, 2022 by Darrell
