Why write a trucking business plan? What’s the point?
- We could sound like some overbearing school teacher. “Do you want to build your trucking business?”
- Or that person in the family – you know who we’re talking about. “Do you want to keep your trucking business?”
We don’t want to sound like that. You might not think that writing a business plan is worth the time or effort. Or whatever AI – Chatgpt, Grok, CoPilot, or Gemini – writes is good enough. Why write a trucking business plan?
Have you ever seen a kid try to build something?
Maybe we’re showing our age here, but we remember my neighbor trying to build something out of wood about 60 years ago. He was sure all it took was just nailing a few pieces of wood together and he’d have a bike ramp to jump just like Evel Knievel.
Nope. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the drive, the equipment, or the wood. He just didn’t have a plan how to build a ramp. (Fortunately.)
Building without a plan leads to failure. Since he was maybe 7 or 8 years old at that point, and his mother would have killed him if he didn’t kill himself, failure wasn’t a bad outcome.
For your trucking business – ask yourself this: Do you want to pour your time, money, and life into a project doomed to fail?
We don’t want you to do that either.
Build without a plan isn’t building – it’s making a mess. Not that we’re questioning your business, but ask yourself: could you have made better decisions about your business in the past? Allen, our former trucker on staff, tells us story after story about bad decisions he made the led him to closing his trucking business.
Nobody’s always made the right decision at every turn. But if there’s a way to make better decisions in the future – why not do it?
How Is Not Writing a Trucking Business Plan Like Driving in March?
Build is without a plan is like driving in March with the heat on but the windows open. planning for growth
Ohio in March means we experience all the seasons – in one day. We can have summery 70° at noon and snow before sunset – when the sun isn’t blinding us in our faces.
“Don’t like the weather? Wait 5 minutes.” isn’t a joke in Ohio. It’s our lifestyle in March.
So how is not writing a business plan like driving in March?
You’ve got the heater on, and you complain about the temperature, but you open a window instead of adjusting the thermostat. Then you complain about the cold.
In other words, you’re not fixing the real problem. You’re doing the obvious instead of the right thing. How much harder is it to adjust the temperature on the heater? Both of them work at the flip of switch.
The key isn’t to open the window or to turn down the thermostat – it’s to know what the best solution is for the long term.
“How does this relate to writing a trucking business plan?” you ask.
Business plans look to the future. They focus on the current situation and the tools you have now to build a successful future for your trucking business. You’ve got a thermostat and you’ve got a window. What’s the best option for your future – or the next five minutes in the blinding Ohio sunlight (for the 5 minutes you’re in it?)
A business plan looks a the options. It looks at the data from your past – not some AI-generated conceptions of what your trucking business was or should be – and helps you see the decisions you need to achieve your trucking business goals.
Building without a plan is like putting a cat in a carrier – upside down.
“Herding cats” is another way of saying “trying to do the impossible.” Trying to put a reluctant cat into a cat carrier is just as impossible. Putting the cat into an upside-down cat carrier is not only impossible, it makes it harder on you – and the cat.
How does this relate to writing a trucking business plan?
If you want to keep your trucking business alive and growing in this economy, you don’t want to make it harder than it has to be.
The primary purpose of writing a trucking business plan is to look at the current status of your business – and its future. That can feel about as impossible as putting a cat in a carrier (upside down or not) right now. Many old owner-operators are looking around and seeing the same situation as in 2007. They’re rightfully worried about the current economy.
You want to be positioned to survive whatever the economy brings you. After all, we’re never not going to need truckers. Everything in our lives depends on truckers. We want you to come out at the other end of the economic cycle with your business intact – and growing.
Future expansion
“If you’re not growing, you’re dying” is one of those business sayings that drove us to build Trucker Stats™ into our trucking management software. The information you need is inside the data in your business. But unless you know what you need to know, you’ll never even bother looking for it.
TruckingOffice PRO’s Trucker Stats™ show you what you need to know. Right away – no waiting to find out
- where your revenue is coming from,
- where your money is going, and
- how to position yourself to make more.
Why is writing a trucking business plan is worth the time?
To give you a future. One that suits you and your situation, not one that AI thinks you need.
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