Start Your Own Transportation Service - Cheryl Kimball StartUp Series

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plan to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. Business owners at all times should be making business happen. Take the results of your networking and pick up the phone. Offer to move someone for the cost of gas in order to get experience and perhaps a testimonial. Be a rainmaker and make your business a success.

      Don’t assume that just because your business does not rely on local customers you don’t need to interact with your local community. Any business will rely on local government and local politics when it comes to regulations, taxes, policies, and much more. For instance, if you are a long-haul trucking business you will likely need to take local roads to get to the highway. You will want to keep abreast of things like spring load posting limits (in northern climates when the soil is thawing, the heavy loads can damage the road surface) and if/when legislation arises to change those limits.

      Attend chamber of commerce events and offer to host a “business after hours” if your office is large enough. Join the local Rotary Club and interact with business leaders who can bring business your way. If this kind of thing just doesn’t interest you, then you need to be sure to hire someone who can do this. Sponsor the local middle school Little League team, and show the community you care about the place in which you do business. And you want them to care about your business.

      

The Factory Model versus the Fruit Stand Model

       George Horrigan, business planner and founder of Fountainhead Consulting Group, talks about the “factory model versus the fruit stand model” of growing a business. Almost all businesses start out in the “fruit stand model” where the owner is highly involved, opens the doors in the morning, and if the owner is not there the business does not make money. And some businesses are naturally in the fruit stand mode longer than others. But for those business owners with the goal of expanding or eventually having their business work for them, Horrigan encourages establishing your businesses with the intention of quickly moving to the “factory model” where the owner is dealing with the bigger-picture issues that lead to a thriving business and sets up processes where day-to-day business can be delegated to others. This is what Horrigan feels leads to a thriving business that is set up to grow from the beginning.

      After thinking through all of these things about the business you are considering starting, do you still feel as good about the idea as before? Don’t ignore those nagging feelings—this is a huge life-changing step you are about to take! If something is bothering you about any aspect of what you thought you had decided for your niche in the transportation market, it doesn’t mean you have to think of something else—think through what it would take to address that particular thing. Enlist help if you need to, because there is always a workaround, even if you can’t come up with what it is yourself. Then you can begin to create your business knowing that you are headed in the right direction for you, your family, and your lifestyle.

      stat fact

      Each year, Thumbtack (an online service matchmaker) rates U.S. cities for their small-business friendliness. The five worst for 2015 were:

       1. Hartford, CT

       2. Albuquerque, NM

       3. Buffalo, NY

       4. New Haven, CT

       5. Winston-Salem, NC

      aha!

      The most important question to answer when you are choosing a business model is “How do I prefer to spend my day?” Of course, everyone deals with things that they don’t particularly like to do, but your chosen business should, for the most part, let you spend your day the way you like best. Inside, outside, at a desk, on the road, on the phone creating business—whatever it is for you.

       CHAPTER 3

       Meet Your Mentors

      There is no better way to learn the ins and outs of starting any small business than to talk with business owners who have done it—either successfully or not. In fact, sometimes those who have not been successful are the ones you can learn from the most!

      The following transportation businesses are still in operation. You will see that their owners are passionate about what they do. They will occasionally be mentioned and quoted in other parts of this book. Therefore it seems appropriate that you meet them near the beginning of this book so when we encounter them later you’ll already be acquainted.

       (www.equine-transport.net)

      Pat Thompson has had a horse or two in her backyard most of her life. When she built the house she still lives in, the barn was as important to her as the house. She boarded a few horses and got involved with showing. And she got to know a few people in the equine world.

      In 1995, one of those people she met through the world of horse showing had a bad experience with an equine transporter. She asked Pat—who already had a good-sized horse trailer and truck because she herself was doing a lot of showing and had a reputation for topnotch care of her own and her boarders’ horses—if she would consider transporting her horse the next time she needed to get to a show grounds a distance away. And the rest, as they say, is history.

      Pat started slowly. Her original trailer had living quarters, and she would do straight-through hauling. Now 20 years later she has abandoned that approach and does not allow her subcontractors to do it either. Because of the relationships she has built over the years drivers and horses can stay overnight at farms countrywide. She decided it was better for the horse and meant the drivers were fresher if they stopped for the night and stayed in stalls and hotels rather than on the rig. She picks places that show the quality of care that she believes in and has a nearby hotel and restaurants so they can be efficient in getting in in the evening and out the next morning.

      East Coast has had subcontractors whose rigs hold more horses, but Pat has found that she can be competitive keeping her load to no more than four horses.

      “The more horses you need to fit in, the harder it is to build a load,” she says, referring to the coordination that goes into getting one horse from New England to Texas, picking up a horse in Kentucky along the way that is headed to Florida, or whatever the configuration may be. Ever mindful of each horse’s well-being, Pat says that with a maximum of four horses there aren’t as many stops and side trips along the way, all four horses get to where they are going faster, and the horses aren’t being exposed to so many different horses from different parts of the country.

      “The big rigs,” Pat says, “hold up to 18 horses. That’s a lot of stops.” In fact, one thing that keeps her rig on the road regularly is doing final legs of the trip for some of those big rigs that don’t want to come up into the Northeast. They might, for example, bring a horse from Colorado to Kentucky. East Coast meets the rig in Kentucky and brings the horse up to its final destination in New England.

      East Coast will rent the whole trailer for a dedicated trip for just one horse. The way

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