How to grow your shipping fleet

Growing your fleet can be difficult. When you want to expand your business there is generally a stage where you will be cutting down on the amount of profit that you make. This can be due to additional payments that you will be paying out for a larger office, more employees, or an increase in your vehicle fleet. 

However beneficial or required this growth happens to be, it is vital to your business’s running and continued success that you rein in your spending spree and actually look for cheaper alternatives until your business shows an increased and easily maintainable profit margin. You can do this by keeping the costs of your new and additional expenses down with a few easy tricks.

#1 Purchase secondhand vehicles

When you increase the number of vehicles you have in your fleet, look to the secondhand van sales market for your new vehicles. Even vehicles that are only a few years old are vastly cheaper than those coming fresh off of the manufacturing line. Although you will have to be savvy in your choice of vehicle and its age and limit the mileage you would be happy with, you will find that there are some real bargains to be taken advantage of.  

#2 Ensure that there is plenty of work 

With additional vehicles and, therefore, more drivers, you are going to need to make sure you are keeping them all busy or end up paying for drivers and vehicles to sit idle. Finding additional work may not be as frustrating, time-consuming, or soul destroying as you would imagine. This is due to professional shipping broker websites such as https://www.shiply.com/us/truck-loads that allow customers to advertise their own shipping work for businesses such as yours to select and bid on. With loads that vary from single items to pallet loads, this is a great way to fill in any empty slot within your driver’s working day to ensure maximum profits for your outlay.

#3 Hire the services of remote workers

Of course, with an increase in your deliveries and your shipping drivers, you are going to want to provide more support within your office. This could be in an enhancement of your sales and marketing teams as well as in your warehouse employees. Your warehouse employees will have to remain on-site, but your office employees can, if provided with the right technology, work from anywhere in the world.  

This means that you will be able to hire additional employees without increasing your office space – which can be a great way to make a saving on rent. However, it could also mean that by offering your current employees the option of remote work, you could enlarge your warehouse into your old office area, which will also allow your warehouse to grow and therefore make your business even more profitable.

Final thoughts

Expanding and growing your business is likely to be the goal of your business ambitions. However, it would be best to do it in a way that does not see money hemorrhaging out of your bank account while still providing your business with enough room to flourish.

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