What You Need to Start Your Own Trucking Company

When thinking about starting your own trucking company, there are a lot of steps you need to take. It can be hard to sort through what you need and what you don’t need. Especially in the trucking industry, there are a lot of regulations you need to follow, and to make it all even more confusing, there are some registrations you don’t even need. Here’s a short list to help you sort through what you do and don’t need to get your trucking company started.

What You’ll Need

You can’t start a company with nothing. To get your trucking company started, you’ll need to make sure you have access to:

Finances

Whether or not this comes out of your own pocket or from a loan, you’ll need some finances to start and run your business in the beginning. Filling out the paperwork for your new trucking company costs money and so do the trucks, whether or not you choose to lease or own.

Proper Registration

What makes starting a trucking company different from any other small business is the amount of paperwork and registration you need to fill out before you can start hauling loads. Regardless of what your company hauls, you’ll need your new trucking authority, which includes your:

• MC Number
• USDOT Number
• BOC-3 Form
• Unified Carrier Registration

There are a number of other registrations you have to fill out depending on the trucking company. These registrations vary on where you transport and what you transport. For example, those who are hauling in Texas will need a Texas DOT Number. If you don’t plan on hauling in Texas, you don’t need one. If you don’t want to get caught spending money on registrations you don’t need, decide what and where you’ll haul before you even start filling out paperwork.
Get Your Motor Carrier Authority

Assets

If you’re going to start your own trucking company, you’re going to need a truck. There are a number of ways you can finance your own truck, whether you choose to lease it or simply own it. By choosing a full-service lease, while you don’t own the truck, there are a lot of expenses you don’t have to cover. After a few years you may be able to get a newer and better truck for cheaper. You don’t have to worry about selling an old truck if you choose to lease, and you can usually cancel the lease before the contract ends (with some extra fees). However, you have better control over your assets and may be eligible for tax deductions if you choose to own your own truck.

Employees

Whether or not you have employees depends on how big you want your company to be. You can be your own boss as an owner operator or you can hire employees to transport loads for you. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of interviewing and hiring your own employees, you can also choose to contract other owner operators to haul for you, even if they don’t technically work for you. There are advantages and disadvantages for each option.

HR

Having a Human Resources department for your company depends on whether or not you’re aiming to become an owner operator or hiring your own employees. If you’re an owner operator, that means you own or lease your own truck, choose your own loads, and work for who you want to work. If you would rather hire employees, you may need an HR to take care of extra tasks, such as following protocol in the Drug and Alcohol Consortium and the required supervisory training course depending on the size of your fleet.

How to Get Started

When looking to start your own company, you don’t have to do it yourself. At Progressive Reporting, we believe that paperwork shouldn’t slow you down. While you could do all of the paperwork yourself, we can help you navigate through all of the confusing regulation to save you money and time. If you have any questions about how to start your new trucking business, give us a call at (866) 574-2978 to get started.