As your trucking company grows, you need to know where to expand your business. Spending more money on extra employees and more trucks can help you to earn more income. You might also consider hiring an in-house maintenance team to lower your continual repair costs.
Assessing Your Needs
Deciding between these may seem like a gamble, but one thing that the owner of any long-haul trucking company can be sure of is that you’re going to need repairs soon enough. If you’ve been at this for a while already, in the position of owner or employee, you already know that it isn’t a matter of if but a matter of when.
Why Employ a Maintenance Department?
Any business that requires the regular use of vehicles should include a maintenance department as soon as it is financially viable – whether you’re running a taxi company, car rental business or trucking fleet.
Outsourcing is Too Expensive
The most critical reason is that outsourcing repairs will take a heavy toll on your bottom line. It would help if you had a maintenance department to complete your repairs in-house for the same reason oil companies and other large companies do not outsource their shipping to you because it costs less when you own the entire control of your business.
Keeping Your Fleet in Top Shape
Truck company owners who outsource repairs tend to wait longer to have their vehicles maintained to try to keep costs low. In these cases, they run into problems on the road more often because you won’t have a team that can regularly assess your trucks whenever they are at your place of business.
This means that your drivers will be more susceptible to accidents and breakdowns in remote locations, making them reliant on new mechanics you do not know. Bit by bit, all of these expenses add up. So does all of the times your drivers waste getting their trucks towed.
Assessing the Condition of Old Vehicles
Ultimately, your mechanics are going to know the condition of your fleet much better than you do. As such, you can get advice from them on when particular trucks are getting too old for the job. They can also advise you on the best Western Star dealership in your area, so you can replace old vehicles with quality trucks that will be guaranteed to last longer.
Happier Clients
The longer you go without an in-house maintenance team, the more often your drivers will be late delivering your shipments. You might be able to earn money with this strategy, but the longer you continue to operate in this way, the less chance you’ll have of developing your company into a success.
Running a trucking company requires difficult choices, but when considering the benefits of hiring a maintenance crew, it doesn’t make any sense to choose against including this vital service in your company. You can get started by taking your next potential new mechanic with you to the dealership to provide advice regarding your next Western Star truck purchase.
