Truckers are keeping America moving forward by supplying stores, restaurants, and healthcare professionals
Category: Industry News
For Immediate Notice: Sunbelt Finance Statement on COVID-19
We wanted to let you know that as the Coronavirus illness COVID-19 situation continues to evolve,
Tips for becoming a female truck driver
Today we’ll share some tips for becoming a female truck driver, but first, let’s address
The Hope Circle: Sunbelt Finance Team Members make a Positive Impact.
Several of our staff's family has been affected by cancer so we all gather supplies for them to give chemo patients every year. Hope circle offers families that have members suffering from terminal illnesses support
Are Trucking Logs Mandatory?
Are trucking logs mandatory? We get this question a lot. Here’s the short answer. Yes. Keep reading further for the details on how we got here.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance confirmed that it is fully enforcing a brand new regulation to its unpopular digital-logging-device (ELD) mandate on December 17. They are not using a “gentle enforcement” grace duration for truckers to adapt to the brand new rules.
The unique mandate came into impact two years ago. It was spearheaded with the aid of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which oversees all of America’s commercial drivers, inclusive of its 1.8 million lengthy-haul truckers. The corporation said long-haul truck drivers had to both use a digital logging device or an automatic onboard recording device beginning in December 2017 and gave truck drivers a 3-month grace duration to adapt to the rules.
Really Though, Are Trucking Logs Mandatory?
The CVSA, which tasked with enforcing FMCSA policies through roadside inspections, stated it would implement the state-of-the-art solution to the FMCSA’s mandate without any allowances made for drivers switching from the antique onboard recording tool to the digital logging tool.
Is it really
Truckers Pay: Four Questions You Can’t Avoid
Learn more about truckers’ pay with these four questions and answers you simply can’t avoid.
Tips To A Successful Trucking Business
Many trucking techniques are kept under wraps because of the solitary nature of the business. A trucker is provided with a truck, a set of keys, a product or item to haul, a place to load, and a location where he needs to deliver the load. All of this creates an atmosphere where sharing knowledge with others is limited. Lucky for you, we’re sharing the secret tips to a successful trucking business today.
Here’s Our List of 10 Tips To A Successful Trucking Business
Always have a plan.
- This includes the obvious route and time plan to pick up and deliver loads. You also need to include plans for maintaining your equipment, plans for staying healthy on the road, and plans to get the right amount of home time. And most important of all, you need a plan on how to reach your goals, both personal and business.
Transportation Factoring: The Many Benefits of
If you own a trucking company of any size, you know that financing your business is a critical part of staying in the business year after year. The idea that all financing is the same and will benefit every type of industry, in the same way, is a misconception. Transportation Factoring has numerous benefits to help business owners, Below are just a few!
- Quick approvals. Factoring a freight bill is a process that is often approved
Fuel Prices and Shipping Costs
The two main driving forces behind the logistics industry are people and fuel. No matter the transportation mode (road, rail, air, etc.), freight remains stationary without capable hands at the wheel and fuel in the tank. Unfortunately, fuel costs are one of the most volatile aspects in the shipping industry; prices change overnight – sometimes drastically – and that changes the game for everyone involved.
According to Transportation Economics and Management Systems Inc. (TEMS), fuel price fluctuations have an overall larger impact on the trucking industry vs. rail or water transportation. Whether the pricing for crude oil lands at $145 per barrel (as it was in the summer of 2008) or at $29 per barrel (as it was in February 2016), the transportation industry must adjust accordingly.
Most carriers calculate their fuel surcharges based on fuel prices from the previous week. This delay in pricing adjustment allows freight companies to react quickly to pricing changes. However, rail companies tend toward longer lags in pricing adjustment and thus are not as responsive to fuel price changes. As the cost of fuel increases, all players in the manufacturing and transportation industries are affected. Not only do consumers pay more at the pump, they also end up paying more at the store. In order to maintain profit margins, carriers adjust prices according to new fuel costs. When fuel prices go up, so do carrier mileage charges. These changes in overall charges trickle down to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods.
Although trucking is heavily affected by changes in fuel costs, it’s not the only transportation sector that feels the effects. According to TEMS, when fuel prices increase, many trucking companies and freight brokers supplement long-distance hauls with intermodal transport due to intermodal being a more economical shipping method. Luckily, higher profit margins for carriers and shippers trickle down to the consumer through reductions in the prices of consumer goods.
Low fuel prices can be a catch-22 for the rail industry. Short-term effects of low fuel prices increase the profit margin for railroad transportation. However, when fuel prices are low, shippers are more likely to utilize trucks for their transportation needs, as trucks can transport goods faster than rail. In this scenario, rail capacity increases as usage declines. As fuel prices continue to stay at historic lows, effects on transportation and freight shipping costs tend to benefit the consumer. It’s easy to forget how much small pricing changes affect the overall consumer industry. In a constantly moving industry, you can expect profit margins and consumer costs to hinge closely on changing fuel prices.
Fun Fact : UPS charges a variety of different fuel surcharges for different services. For ground, they range from 5.25 percent of the total cost of the shipment when fuel is under $2.54 per gallon to 8 percent of the cost of the shipment when ground fuel reaches $3.86.
What is Freight Factoring?
Owning and managing any type of Freight Company isn’t easy. During most days, the owner can end up managing many different roles from owner, manager, accountant, marketing and even HR to name a few. Due to juggling so many things, it’s easy to let something slip through the cracks. That’s where freight factoring comes in. It’s a financial service that helps increase cash flow, allowing the owner able to handle other things in the business without letting something fall through.
Making money the easy way.
Freight factoring is when a trucking company sells the invoice for a load they’ve hauled in order to get cash immediately, instead of waiting however many days it’ll take for a broker to pay. Since this will speed up things for the hauler, the factoring company will take a percentage of the invoice as a fee, but factoring is one of the most common ways that trucking companies improve their cash flow. This happens often in new companies that are trying to replenish startup cost.
Does your cash even flow?
Cash flow is the main objective with Freight factoring. Because of cash flow this keeps a trucking company in business. Freight factoring is about always having ready funds for fuel, payroll, repairs, and more. Factoring is an easy way to manage cash flow for your trucking company.