Who’s Messing Up Trucking?
Logistics management solutions deal with the biggest problem in trucking: humans.
Let’s just admit it now: trucking is simple. Pick up the load, take the load to its destination, off-load it. It’s humans that keep messing it up.
- We get drivers who do stupid things that end up hurting themselves and others, sometimes because the shippers ask for the impossible.
- We get laws to stop drivers from doing stupid things that don’t penalize the shippers enough for asking for impossible things.
- We get requirements for record-keeping and taxes put on drivers and penalize them when truckers can’t or don’t follow the laws.
That’s just for starters.
There aren’t logistics management solutions that can change humans. But it can change how we humans do our business.
Errors in Entry
Maybe the biggest help to truckers is the smartphone. We now have the capability to enter data immediately into a computer program. By itself, that’s almost a miracle. No more searching for a scrap of paper to record numbers… or to search for the scrap of paper we wrote the numbers on. I know, I know, truckers don’t have to be disorganized and could keep a notebook handy for all that. But I’ll admit it – sometimes the back of a coffee receipt was the best I had.
No longer. Now it’s easy. Using TruckingOffice, I can enter my load data from the moment of the dispatch. I will update it as is necessary, and then finish with the invoice emailed to the shipper before I leave the delivery dock.
And if I were even younger, I might be using my smartphone’s camera to make it easier – take a picture of a receipt instead of keeping track of that piece of paper. Take a snapshot of my odometer at the start and end of every load along with the bills of lading, just to keep for my records in case the shipper decides to question my invoice. Pictures of my expense receipts – fuel and food – all saved for future consideration.
There are a lot of truckers who aren’t interested in using a computer for their trucking business. But by making it easy to enter data and to check it immediately, we eliminate a lot of errors before they can become a problem down the road.
Human Error and Taxes
Logistics management solutions can free you from many of the time-consuming tasks that pull you off the road and away from putting money in your pocket.
IFTA taxes are only one example. You mess up the IFTA filing and you’re in for fines and penalties and interest. They don’t care if you’ve lost a fuel receipt. They won’t care if you spent hours on your filing if you do it wrong. Getting your information correct the first time means you won’t have to worry about underpaying the IRS. You don’t have to think about an overpayment taking money out of your pocket.
Tracking Expenses on Little Pieces of Paper
Let me ask you: are you still using a trip envelope?
As you know, when you’re in the trucking business for yourself, you get your money when you deliver a product or service to your client, not before. Making sure that a trip doesn’t cost you money to deliver has to be your top priority. So tracking your expenses is a key to success.
The trip envelope is a great idea – for the 20th century. Did you ever pull our your receipts mid-trip and discover you’re in the hole? Probably not. But if you’ve got a system that tracks your data in real time, you can do that.
Move away from the envelope and into a dispatch data mindset. You’ll see your savings and your profit reports online on your phone – not on your desktop computer – or worse, a ledger book – days or weeks later.
Secure Envelopes?
I can’t imagine there’s a trucker out there who hasn’t accidently dropped a trip envelope into a puddle at least once. If you’re using logistics management solutions, you don’t have to worry about soggy paper – or leaving your phone at a truck stop. Your data can be safely stored for easy access and secure against anyone trying to steal it. TruckingOffice’s cloud-based model enables you to take care of business from a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or desktop unit. Yet our state-of-the-art security protocols keep your data safe from prying human eyes.
What’s the Best of the Logistics Management Solutions?
You need a solution that’s portable, secure, modern and easy to use.
If you want, you can stay with your 20th Century solutions, but trucking has moved past that now. You need to move with it. That’s why we built TruckingOffice – the simplest and best-designed trucking management software solution for owner-operators like you.
Enjoy these powerful capabilities for a low monthly subscription fee. You’ll never have to worry about installing a new version of TruckingOffice, obtaining the latest anti-virus protection, or fussing with fragile compact discs. We take care of all the backend work for you, empowering you to deal with the big-picture tasks that affect your company’s bottom line.
Try our TruckingOffice logistics management solutions for yourself by taking our software for a free test drive starting today. We look forward to welcoming you to the TruckingOffice family.
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