Fuel for Thought

Busy

Busy. As a business owner you can consider yourself quite busy at times. In fact, you might actually be busy, but is busy a good thing for a business owner? Not necessarily. 

It is easy to equate busy with success, and you can be both busy and successful, but with the current state of the trucking markets, staying busy might not be in your best interest. Keeping busy just to keep the wheels turning can be detrimental to your success. There is busy work and productive work. I choose to be productive rather than just busy.

As rates have declined, too many truckers have resorted to taking low paying busy work just to have something to do, but if that work is not enough to cover expenses and your profit, you are just spinning your wheels.

If you are taking loads with rates that are substandard for your business needs, step back and take an objective look at your profit and loss. While you cannot wait forever for that magical high dollar load to materialize, you can make better decisions about the loads you will accept. Profit margins may be down from the previous years’ high rates, but you can still find loads suitable to meet your needs, unless you have overextended yourself at home, in your business or both. If this is the case, you will need to make some decisions to reduce your overhead to gain more profit.

Staying busy instead of being productive only leads you deeper in the hole. If you can be both busy and productive, you will reap greater rewards. 

I hear people say all the time they are busy but struggling to keep afloat, if this is the case, try being productive. Focusing on productivity can lead to greater profits for your business. You may not turn as many miles as the busy work, but you will become more profitable. 

You could drive 2000 miles per week @ $1.75 or you could just run 1000 miles per week @ $3.50. In the end, you would be more productive running fewer miles for the same revenue.

Choose your loads wisely. Never take loads out of desperation.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. 

- Thomas A. Edison

See you down the road,

Greg