Are you making New Years Resolutions? Lots of people do that right about now, but since New Years Day was on a Friday, they decided to wait to get started until today. Then, about 3 weeks later, their trucking business goals have already been forgotten.
That may be because the trucking business goals they set aren’t the ones they need to achieve.
Make SMART Trucking Business Goals for 2021
Nobody knows what next year will bring. That hasn’t stopped anyone from making SWAG (stupid, wild-ass guesses) pronouncements about what we’ll see this year. In that sense, 2021 isn’t much different from 2020, is it?
SMART goals are not set without some time spent thinking about what you and your trucking business need.
- Do you need new equipment (or new to you?)
- Should you invest in new tires now or later?
- Can you find a better insurance price?
Are those things that really need to be goals? After all, the decision about your tires is pretty much yes or no. It’s not a goal.
Trucking Business Goal or Vision?
Any business goal has to address your priorities. That’s not to say that tires aren’t a priority, but they’re part of a bigger picture: truck maintenance. Maintaining your truck must be a priority: you don’t have a business without a rig.
Prioritize your business needs and what you need to grow your business. Don’t know? Then take some time to learn about how to run a business well. (That might even be your goal for the year: learn how to run your business better.)
Do you know where you want to be in 5 years?
Do you think you’ll still want to be trucking – or do you have other ideas, like having your own authority or your own fleet? The ideas are your vision: the goals are the steps you need to take to fulfill your vision.
Get a sense of your commitment to your future.
It’s hard to make goals and plans when you don’t have a vision for what you want. Maybe that’s hard to do. Maybe
- you’re new to trucking
- you don’t know what you can expect from your career
- the economy feels too unpredictable.
A great deal of creating a vision is faith in the future – but also having confidence that you’re willing to work even when it’s tough. If you decide to do the work and to make the adjustments as circumstances change.
Evaluate your situation regularly.
You have a lot of data available to you if you’re using a good trucking business management software. Using that data to examine your
- expenses
- revenue
- track your customers
- schedule your maintenance
can give you critical information to build on your success to greater growth.
This does require you to use a full software that’s going to give you all your information in a way that relates to trucking, and in specific, your business. Some programs are great for accountants and don’t have any options for the trucking industry. You need an overview report that shows you your expenses and revenue per mile.
Keep an eye on the future.
Where you want to be in 5 years might be possible in 4. When you pay attention to your industry, you’ll get a sense of where it’s moving and how you can move with it. One example may be how the industry is adjusting to the ELD mandate. Some adjustments were made on the national level because of COVID 19. Will those changes remain in place? You may want to reconsider certain decisions that you’ve made based on what DOT does.
Your Trucking Business Goals
As you fine tune your vision, then you can set your business goals. Remember to make them smart:
- specific
- measurable
- achievable
- results-focused
- timed.
What goals should you set? Well, you want to be profitable. Do you want to own a fleet? Or perhaps your goal is to hire drivers? Do you want to move into brokering or get your own authority? There are dozens of answers to the question of what your goals should be: we’ll let you make those plans.
We want to help you reach your trucking business goals. TruckingOffice trucking management software provides you with the data you need in a format that makes sense in the trucking industry. That’s why a powerful program like TruckingOffice was built. Getting you the data and information you need in a matter of seconds to help you decide which load to take – or not take – is what you need. That’s what we provide.
Free trial available now
Want to give it a try for free? We’ve got a free trial for you to examine everything that TruckingOffice has to offer. Use us for your IFTA this month by entering the Q4 data for 2020 for free and then play around. You don’t have to re-enter the data: enter your dispatches and expenses and you’ll discover secrets that your trucking business software has never told you.
And take some time this week and think about your trucking business goals. We’ll talk more about that next week.
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