During my time in business, I’ve often compared how I organized my operations to baking a “cake.” You may ask “what does a cake have to do with the trucking industry?”

If you have too much icing than cake, you may become ill. Let me explain: when developing my account base, I first went after businesses which offered year round stability of shipments. These were small to medium sized companies. Only after having a secure foundation did I go on to look for the icing portion of the cake. The icing refers to shipments which were “seasonal, short-term and offered higher pay.”

Often times it seems easy to chase after the icing first. You may get a big “sugar rush” which can fall off when the immediate project is over. Therefore, I find it better to develop the cake first which is solid, then go after some icing to round out your business.

Now all we need to do is figure out how to have our cake and eat it too!

Henry

Comments (8)

Henry Albert

Henry Albert is the owner of Albert Transport, Inc., based in Statesville, NC. Before participating in the "Slice of Life" program, Albert drove a 2001 Freightliner Century Class S/Tâ„¢, and will use his Cascadia for general freight and a dry van trailer. Albert, who has been a trucker since 1983, was recognized by Overdrive as its 2007 Trucker of the Year.

Read These Next...

BUSINESS Smart

Finding Your Own Customers

August 27, 2012

 
 

I found that you really have to make sure you have more than one cake. We had all our cake in one basket :) and not good. We were plenty busy for like 8 years then the bottom fell out of the economy and voila we had no cake. So now we have several.

October 21, 2012 15:50:31 PM

That is a interesting way of putting it!

October 08, 2012 17:04:14 PM

This is by far the best way to build any business though it is often forgotten in a world of "Get Rich Quick" schemes.

October 06, 2012 17:31:08 PM

I actually prefer pie.

October 06, 2012 17:04:15 PM

I like the cake. The cake is always there and will get you threw the lean times.

October 05, 2012 20:51:48 PM

Like the problem with the icing it would make us sick in the end... We have to have a base line or as Henry says the "cake".

October 05, 2012 7:50:02 AM

If only we could go from one batch of icing to another...

October 04, 2012 12:20:30 PM

It is easy to always want the sugar rush or as we call it "Cherry Picking" loads and sometimes this works but in the long run it is the "cake" that sustains us.

October 02, 2012 7:07:11 AM