Are you passing up profit opportunities because the sole trailer you own and operate is a flatbed? At the time you purchased it, committing to a flatbed alone may have seemed like the most viable option to maximize available freight. Perhaps the reality of the market has changed or the nature of the loads—tarping requirements and other drawbacks—has made owning and operating a flatbed alone a less attractive strategy than it once was. On the other hand, the expense of adding a conventional van and paying upkeep, insurance and storage costs on two separate trailers doesn’t make good business sense, either—particularly considering that one of the two will always be sitting idle and unused.
Advertising on a trailer, truck or van puts your brand and message in motion.
While stationary billboards have been the staple of outdoor advertising for decades, advertising on commercial vehicles is now a competitive option for the most advertising bang-per-buck.
A semi-trailer and the wide open road add up to a powerful strategy for advertising your company and brand to millions of motorists.
The considerable available square footage on both sides of a 50-foot trailer offers powerful potential to reach out to an ever-changing market. Every mile your trailer travels down the road with blank sides, on the other hand, is a missed marketing opportunity.
Lead generation is a process that motivates prospective customers to take the next step.
In mobile trailer advertising, lead generation means the prospect who glimpses an effective ad is inspired to take action, expressing interest in a product or service in some way, shape or form. That may include going to a brick-and-mortar location to shop for it, making a telephone inquiry or simply visiting a website. Advertising on semi-trailers visually exposes thousands of potential customers to your message as the truck covers miles of busy streets and highways every day.
If you are in the business of transporting delicate products such as windows, windshields or other large glass items...
...you must be wondering if it is safe to transport these items in a curtainside trailer. The simple answer is yes. Custom curtainside systems can be fitted to any trailer design, including those with air suspension systems for transporting fragile goods.
One-way rates do not a trucking company make. Your shipper may be happy to pay a high one-way rate, but if you are deadheading back, your one-way rate is (for all practical purposes) cut in half. Your one-way rate has to cover expenses both ways. Back-hauling will never be your main bread and butter, but getting a little income for heading home can make that one-way rate look mighty good.
Back-hauls help make the return trip from shipping destinations profitable as well as productive.
Deadheading, driving an empty trailer back from a delivery, is a waste of fuel, driver time, and vehicle wear and tear on the return trip. Locating a back-haul load at or in the nearby vicinity of where the outbound load was delivered is the key to optimizing revenue opportunities.
Box trucks are a common sight on city streets every day. A closer look reveals the fact that, more and more, these short-haul, medium-load carriers are curtainside bodies. The Class B box truck in lengths up to 26 feet is the workhorse of local delivery. Companies ship items ranging from small boxes to mattresses to wall-sized flat-screens, all bound for local and regional destinations. The capacity to handle a wider variety of loads than a cargo van, combined with the economy of operating a truck smaller than a tractor-trailer, makes the workaday box truck a major player in the business of moving freight. Here are some of the reasons why curtainsides are becoming more common in that market:
Some costs of operating a fleet are beyond your control: fuel prices that rise and fall with the international market, insurance, and necessities like the cost of finding and training drivers. However, you’re not totally without options in the fight to reduce operating costs of a fleet. Numerous opportunities exist to make changes and improve the bottom line. More good news: many changes that lower costs also make your fleet more efficient and productive, as well as increasing customer satisfaction. Take a closer look at your own operation and you can probably come with a number of ways of cutting unnecessary expense. Meanwhile, here are three examples to start with:
It won’t come as a surprise to any fleet manager: Traffic congestion is a factor that complicates daily dispatching and it’s only getting worse. Today, freight in urban areas moves slower than ever. Increasingly, fleet managers have to make on-the-fly schedule adjustments as trucks are snarled in standstill traffic. The Department of Transportation estimates that traffic congestion imposes $27 billion dollars in wasted fuel and labor hours on freight companies. It’s also a public relations issue for our industry. Trucks inevitably tend to be the highest-profile, most visible target for the frustrations of commuters fuming behind the wheel in ever-growing gridlock.
