Start Your Own Transportation Service. Cheryl Kimball
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Newsletters
Press Releases
Make It Newsworthy
The Power of Customer Service
Retaining Customers Through Topnotch Customer Service
Giving Back to Your Community
Building Your Image
Traditional Media with a Digital Twist
eNewsletters
Chapter 12
Social Media
Blogs
Photo-Sharing Platforms
Snapchat
Appendix
Transportation Resources
Books
Blogs
Conferences
Magazines
Organizations
Glossary
Index
The transportation industry in America is alive and well. And there are so many entrance points that anyone interested in starting a small business could find something in the transportation industry that would interest them and utilize their strengths and skills.
One consistent piece of advice we received from all transportation business owners—advice that is common with all small-business startups—is that you cannot do enough planning before you start your business. And one important part of planning is to talk with others in the field you intend to enter. Transportation covers a wide range of services—we interviewed a taxi cab service, a horse transport business, and a helicopter business, showing with just those three businesses how diverse this field is! And each one of them has its own set of complex regulations. Hauling livestock requires knowledge on interstate agricultural regulations, helicopter service is subject to a huge array of federal aviation regulations, and any service carrying human passengers is highly regulated—something that the popularity of the five-year-old ride service Uber has challenged as antiquated. But despite regulations, the transportation field offers some lucrative and creative business possibilities.
Planning is important and made easier with the amount of information available on the internet. Government regulations might be hard to slog through, but you can do it in the comfort of your own home without having to print out hundreds of pages.
Don’t forget to look up from the computer and talk to people who have been in your shoes and gone on to run successful transportation businesses. Utilize the SCORE program of retired executive advisors. While these entrepreneurs may not have kept up on the most recent changes in regulations, they have great advice and experience to draw on.
So sit back, relax, and read about what you need to do to get off on the right foot in this intriguing industry known as transportation. This is admittedly just the tip of the iceberg of the research you will need to do and the planning you will need to put to paper, but you have to start somewhere. This book will launch you on one of the more interesting journeys of your career.
An Overview of the Transportation Industry
From taxis to limousines to bicycle rentals, moving vans, and long-haul transport of refrigerated goods, the transportation industry has a wide range of entry points. Whatever your particular interest is, there is likely a transportation business that can fulfill it.
But first, let’s look at small business as a whole.
The Current State of Small Business in America
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses (defined as those with 250 or fewer employees) employ 56.1 million of the nation’s private workforce. Firms with fewer than 100 employees make up the largest part of small-business employment.
stat fact
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the value of freight carried by all modes of freight transportation (air, ship, pipeline, rail, and truck) was lower in 2015 than 2014.
That said, small business is far from immune to the ups and downs of business cycles. It has taken a while for the small-business sector to recover from the recession in the late 2000s. Just in 2015 did birthing of companies exceed the exit rate, a trend not seen since 2007 according to Business.com. “Small businesses are the forefront of our economy. . . . Every minute, a new business in the U.S. is started and according to some people, more than 50% of all workers will be self-employed by 2020.” (“The State of Small Business in 2015,” May 5, 2015, by Betsy Scuteri, www.business.com.)
Wasp Barcode’s “State of Small Business Report” (www.waspbarcode.com) found the following statistics:
