6 Trucking Company Costs Every Carrier Should Monitor

The more trucking company costs you can reduce or eliminate, the more profitable it will become. Let’s take a closer look at fleet analytics and operations to identify trucking company costs where savings could help you boost profits.

Monitor 6 Trucking Company Costs to Find Potential Savings

For a trucking company, few areas of business operations represent the potential for savings as expenses incurred over the road. From route planning to finding the cheapest fuel to avoiding choke points that can slow drivers down, any time you find a way to improve efficiency or cut costs, you’re putting money back into profit margins.

A new Verizon Fleet Analytics whitepaper on Fleet Management summarizes trucking company costs that represent the areas where any trucking business – from owner-operator to carrier can maximize resources and minimize costs. Taking inspiration from this whitepaper, here are resources you can use to better monitor your costs and identify ways to save money.

1. Route Planning

All routes are not created equal. You already know that just because a given route has fewer miles doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. Traffic patterns, terrain, weather and many other factors can help you determine which route is most efficient. Once upon a time you might have had to experiment with various routes to choose the best one; today you can use GPS-based fleet management and navigation apps, real-time traffic reports, weather apps and other digital tools to scout ahead for a whole route or even on a daily basis.

2. Fuel Usage and Costs

  • 6 Trucking Company Costs Every Carrier Should MonitorCost of fuel
  • Fuel consumption rate
  • Speed management
  • Weight reduction
  • Tire pressure
  • Gradual acceleration
  • Powering down instead of idling

In addition, you can take advantage of special programs like fuel cards and apps that help you reduce fleet fuel expenses. Using fleet fuel cards gives carriers the ability to fund drivers on the road 24×7 and monitor and control expenses. Plus, fuel card members can often use additional tools, like apps for fuel price discovery, reconciliation and optimization and the mobile driver resources apps. Many of these programs include oil, tire and fuel savings where carriers can save as much as $0.10 per gallon on every gallon of fuel when they use their cards at participating truck fuel centers.

3. Maintenance and Repair Costs

Speed is often the most critical factor when one of your fleet’s trucks needs repair or maintenance; every moment a driver loses to downtime represents lost opportunity cost for your trucking company. Good news: There are apps for that too. You can use sites like FindTruckService.com, 4RoadService.com, the NTTS (National Truck and Trailer Services) Breakdown Directory to find help for drivers who have broken down or need maintenance done quickly to keep your trucks moving.

In addition, you can enroll in special transportation industry buying programs that enable you to save money, like TruckersB2B. Not only does this enable significant fuel savings on every gallon of gas pumped and consumed by drivers, it also provides carriers with savings on other items; such as:

  • Commercial truck tires
  • Emergency and breakdown services
  • Buying new and used semi-trucks and trailers
  • Oil and other commercial truck lubricants
  • Semi-truck parts and supplies
  • Software
  • Lodgings (hotel and motel savings)
  • Legal services
  • PM/DOT
  • Toll and bypass cost savings
  • Software and apps
  • Fuel tax reporting
  • Freight finding – and more

Another way to cut trucking company costs in maintenance and supplies is to look for coupons and rebate offers. When you start to think about all of the small ways you can save, you can see how quickly they translate into big savings. Every dollar you save on maintaining, repairing and running your commercial trucking fleet is a dollar that finds its way to the profit column instead of the expense column!

Some factoring companies provide trucking clients with perks like free enrollment in fleet fuel cards and TruckersB2B. Reach out to us for a free freight factoring quote and we’ll help you find factors that provide transportation industry benefits that can maximize the benefits you get from factoring freight bills and invoices.

4. Driving Performance and Driver Actions

Whether you’re an owner-operator or a carrier responsible for many trucks and drivers, it’s important to set guidelines and standards for drivers. Not only can it help you cut trucking company costs and improve efficiencies, it can also improve your company’s safe driving record and help you avoid time lost when driving incidents or accidents occur.

Ensuring public and driver safety was the key motivation behind the DOT Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA program (Compliance, Safety and Accountability). Though results about carrier safety via the national reporting database aren’t currently available to the public at large, they will be once the administration’s carrier safety rating system has been improved. In addition, carriers will have no choice but to monitor some driver’s actions electronically as of December 2017 assuming the ELD Mandate survives court challenges.

5. Employee-Related Expenses

Employee salaries and benefits are usually a major cost center for any organization; however, finding ways to cut employee-related expenses isn’t always the cut and dried concept you’ll find among other operating costs.

For instance, assuming comparable quality, fuels is fuel and motor oil is motor oil. Opting for the lowest price gas, oil or tire supplier means you save money and boost trucking company profit. But opting for the “cheapest” employees sometimes means your company pays a big price in performance, efficiency, expenses and safety. Likewise, cutting employee benefits could lead to low morale and high turnover, taking your best employees out the door and straight to your competitors.

As you evaluate employee-related expenses, one thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you can spend money to save money. Examples including investing in employee training and onboarding to improve driver performance and on-the-road decision making skills. Or paying for employee gym memberships, weight loss and fitness programs to reduce worker compensation and health insurance expenses.

6. Transportation Factoring Services

As with any other supplier or vendor, you should price-check and compare the benefits offered by transportation factoring companies every year to make sure you’re working with the receivables financing company best-suited to serve your trucking business. You might be able to save money with a lower factoring fee, speed up cash flow with higher advances, reap monetary rewards with referral bonuses, and enjoy additional industry savings like those referenced before (free enrollment in fuel cards and TruckersB2B to save money on fuel, tires, oils and other expenses).

We would be happy to provide you with a completely free, no-obligation quote for transportation factoring to compare against your current program or to help you decide whether factoring would help your trucking company grow faster. Simply complete the form below.

Request a Free Freight Factoring Quote

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.