Last Updated on July 16, 2024 by Asfa Rasheed
There are a lot of intricacies to owning a trucking business, and a lot of things that are easily overlooked, which in many ways only adds to the challenge. You need to be aware of what is expected of you as a business owner, and how you can make sure that the business is being run correctly each and every day. This might seem easier said than done, but there are some main areas you can concentrate on as a starting point.
Table of Contents
#1 Employee pay and taxes
As a business owner, you have a lot of responsibilities. One of these is your employee pay and taxes. You need to make sure that your employees are getting their W-2 slips by the end of January to make sure that they can file their taxes. This is the law, under the act of California law AB5, and you have to make sure that you are following it.
This is something that might take a little bit of time, but you need to make sure that all employees that you have employed on the books and are not outsourced get these, otherwise, you could be in a lot of trouble.
#2 ETAs
ETAs are important, as they can help both your truck driver and your client have a better experience with each job. You need to make sure that you are using the best software for your business that both you and your employees are confident with working with. You need to make sure that ETAs are met to the best of your ability, and that you communicate why you can’t meet them with your clients concisely and apologize for any inconvenience. They can be a key point in a trucking business, and failure to reach an ETA without an explanation can leave your customers disappointed and have them leave negative feedback online.
#3 End-user training
This can allow you to help your employees. For instance end-user training can help with enforcing cybersecurity within your business and helps you protect against silly mistakes that might actually cost you a lot of money. You are going to want to make sure that you are investing in this, as it can also help them not fall victim to baiting, phishing, adware, and scareware attempts, as well as other forms of social engineering. This can help save your business a lot of money and employees a lot of embarrassment, which can only be beneficial for all parties involved. Other relevant end-user training, will only be beneficial to your business.
#4 Use your data effectively
You need to learn the benefits of exploiting the data that comes into your business each and every day, and you can do this through data analytics. These can help your business promote effectively to its target audience, see what works best with clients, and most importantly to trucking businesses, what is happening inside the business.
You can see what is going well and what is happening which is damaging the business or is not being done correctly. By using data, you have numbers to support decisions and make predictions, which can be very important to your longevity in the trucking business.
#5 Social media
Social media is something that your trucking business needs. This isn’t just so you can keep in contact with your customers and get announcements and information out to them quickly. This is also because you can host events on there that can be great for your business and communicate things with your customers on a more friendly, one-to-one basis, which can help you build a stronger rapport and community around your business. Trucking companies rely on loyal customers, and this is a great way to help gain them, and most importantly – keep them.
#6 Customer service and customer service training
Customer service, although not massively overlooked, is still something that needs to be focused on. You need to make sure that your drivers know what to do and how to act when faced with a difficult customer, and also how to work with customers if they need things lifted and shifted indoors for them.
You need to make sure that clients feel safe with letting truckers pick things up and drop things off, potentially being let into houses with vulnerable people inside. You need to make sure that you are not only employing carefully but also training well.
#7 Business credit score
This is something, as a trucking business, you are going to need. Roads are unpredictable, and so is the trucking industry as a whole. You have peak times, but when it gets quiet it gets quiet for a very long time, and you might even be considering closing your doors for good.
You need to make sure that your business credit score is high to make sure that you can take out a loan if you absolutely need to, whether it is to pay for truck damage, or to pay for general maintenance when you have minus figures in the month.
#8 Custom swag
This can be a great way to make sure that you are identifiable by your clients. Getting truckers to wear uniforms on drop-off days can be a good way to ensure that your truckers aren’t just mistaken for anybody. Custom swag can also be a good way to say thank you to your customers for trusting their items with your company, and by wearing it they will be advertising your business to others.
#9 Blog
Running a blog can be a lot more beneficial than you might have thought. It can help your customers have a personal insight into your business and help them understand what you do. You can have it as a casual blog, where you have all kinds of articles on there, or you could have an informative blog that customers can look at if they have any concerns or questions about their orders.
This can be great as it helps the process become a lot more controllable for them, and it might even help you by giving them the option to have answers readily online for something they would normally contact you to find out.
Apart from that if you want to know about Real Estate Taxes then please visit our Business page
