It's a Team's Life
Can you afford to change?
When looking at a new company the last thing you want to do is to jump out of the frying pan into the fire or even to another frying pan. Changing companies can be detrimental to your finances and is mentally challenging. Making the choice to leave a carrier takes time and planning and should not be done on the spur of the moment or when upset. Take your time and plan.
We chose to change companies to a much different business model in November and I would suggest to anyone that November and December is not the best time to do this! It is not a good time unless hauling road salt, Christmas Trees or turkeys, which we were not.
First thing is to know that you are going to have a loss of income while going through orientation and to learn the new system. How long will you operate under a loss when making a radical change is up to you and how quickly you acclimate to the new company.
The cost to attend orientation is figured at a loss of $________(insert your income for a week.) We were able to run loads up to the weekend and we went to orientation on a Monday so we did not lose any revenue due to sitting and waiting to attend orientation. What we lost was the downtime to attend class and get our first load.
Our income was drastically reduced, during our first couple of months with our new company, due to many reasons and we knew this would happen due to the time of the year and being new. Now in our third month we are seeing positive changes and we believe this trend will continue to improve.
In ways, our expenses will be up some as we are carrying a wide variety of freight and our fuel mileage went down a little from an average in November of 12.04 to an average in February of 11.41. The drop is due to carrying heavier loads than we have in the past. The truck though, was spec'd to carry heavy freight so this is not a problem.
With the increase in income we are doing a lot more work, calling agents, calling customers to make load and unload times, and planning our routes. We are now running what I believe is as close to having our own authority as we can without actually having it.
My advice:
Think long and hard before changing companies with a totally different business model, as it is expensive and mentally challenging to learn a new system.
Reach out to as many people as possible before changing to find out about the new company’s system. Listen, learn and ask a lot of questions and then look at your own situation to see if you are really ready to change or you are just upset at the moment.
Have reserves built up as it can take time to get up to the income level you need. I would suggest at least a month of income set aside to supplement that first and possible second month. With out that reserve it is easy to make one bad decision after another to get the income stream you need each month.
Network, Network, Network - This if for the new person
getting into trucking as well as changing companies.
Reaching out to people for help not only on
finding loads but for mental support has helped us to stay in a good frame of
mind.
When a company is offering sign on bonuses a good question to ask yourself is Why do they need to do this? When changing to a company that offers a sign on bonus do not use the sign on bonus to sway your decision consider the bonus just that a bonus....
During the first few months with out the support of some very good friends and some mentorship pages for our new company on Facebook we would not have progressed as fast as we have. When we have a question we have a lot of different people we can reach out to. As our experience grows we are learning that we can rely on ourselves to make good decisions.
Bob & Linda Caffee
TeamCaffee

Saint Louis MO
Expediters since January 2005
Expediting isn't just trucking, it's a lifestyle; 

Expediting isn't just a lifestyle, it's an adventure;

Expediting isn't just an adventure, it's a job;

Expediting isn't just a job, it's a business.