The success or the failure of you making a good living out of hotshot trucking depends upon a range of variables.
Perhaps, despite you have even mastered the specialties required to provide the most efficient service delivery for the clients, still, due to some minor ins and outs for which you have little or no control or awareness, you are likely to experience colossal losses in this industry.
Some workers who leave their company truck driving job for hotshot trucking later find their previous job more comforting due to some reasons.
Better Safe Than Sorry…!!
Here comes the reasons why hotshoters, particularly in the USA find hotshot trucking unapproachable, despite its extremely lucrative nature!!
- Lack of Financial Stability
Most of the drivers face this tragedy at the beginning of their hotshot trucking journey. To start their career, they seem to spend every penny they own to possess the vehicle and other basic & fundamental necessities, disregarding the upcoming expenses that are inherent & unavoidable in the future.
Under this situation, it is obvious that they are not prepared at all for abrupt expenses such as a punch on a tire, an accident, or any other possible drawbacks which they would have to face as a novice. However, to overcome this challenge, it demands more practice in planning & organizing of the budget.
2. Unpredictable Nature of Demand
Even though hotshot trucking is known to be a money-spinning field, it is very likely to be subjected directly to the varying demand fluctuations of the customers. Therefore, you can find no judicious stability in your income. It necessitates being equipped with a proper strategic plan to face these uncertainties in this living. This risk can be mitigated to some extent by following Load boards to haul load demands. DAT Truckers Edge Load Board is a reputed load board in use among the hotshoters. We see a tremendous increase in using apps like GoShare by the drivers which is also useful in helping move, delivering, and hauling goods on demand.
3. Time Sensitive Nature of the Hotshot Delivery System
Hotshot trucks do hold the relative advantage of attracting clients through catering to their time-sensitive delivery needs such as a person who is in a rush to transport a critical peripheral required by a regressively establishing plant. This is much pressure on the truck driver as due to one misstep which leads to a whipped effect on the final outcome of the overall performance, all his reviews, connections, revenue, etc. can be collapsed within a second.
Particularly, cross-border delays affected excessive delays recently for the hotshot trucks. Further, the pandemic also affected the time-sensitive nature of this business, resulting in carriers to be operated with high percentages of empty miles.
4. Excessive Competition among the Hotshot Truck Drivers
It is inherent in terms of basic economics that once a particular field is recognized to be lucrative in short term, these profits start to deteriorate in long term due to the concentrated restrictions in that field which leads to rising rivalry. Consequently, there is a thrived competition among the hotshot trucks, resulting in an enormous competition for the drivers to prove themselves.
5. Work & Family Life Conflicts
In case the hotshot truckers are willing to earn a decent amount of revenue, there is low to no possibility for him to get home daily. Truck drivers are often expected to be readily available on road in response to the spontaneous delivery commands of the clients which causes a huge void in the family life balance of these drivers. In case a homesick person chooses to be a hotshot trucker, he would be compelled to experience an enormous discrepancy between decisions flanked by home & work.
6. Meeting Client Expectations is Difficult
There are occasions often where clients’ expectations are far from realization. This is most frequently due to the customers who view the delivery procedure as isolated, regardless of all the practical circumstances, keeping unreal expectations on the organization’s infrastructure.
This tendency is often demonstrated by the customers when they expect Amazon’s service quality derived through fully fledged performance from these human-oriented start-ups. It is always a results-based approach to address these customers with what you can do for them instead of trying to win them by giving them false expectations which is much more likely to leave bad reviews for you. It is always compelling for the customers to stay alert to the real-time status of delivery to adjust their expectations as it is.
7. Freight Capacity Restrictions
In some cases, irrespective of the profound enthusiasm of the truck drivers, the Freight Capacity Restrictions hinder the capacity and the revenue of the truckers. Hotshot trailers are generally maxed out at 40 feet in length, limiting the maximum weight they could carry to 16,500 lbs. if played under the stretch of the legal decree.
This results in not only the weight to haul but also confines hotshot trucks from the list of options of the customers whose desired weight to get delivered exceeds the above limit; which on the other hand could have been more lucrative.
8. Supply Chain Disruption
Ongoing lockdowns, closed cross borders, government interventions on supply chains…!!
What does this pronounce other than Supply Chain Disruption?!
It is hard to discard the fact that in a fragile service sector like Hotshot trucking which is sensitively subjected to almost all the competitive parameters, supply chain agility is a must. Even though all the industries recently had a lucky escape from the China and US conflict which still exhibits a cold war in terms of trade, anything that goes bad would turn world trade into ashes.
This can be denoted as an era during which a remarkably incomparable distraction was faced by the transportation industry throughout its prolonged history. All its traumatic experiences such as flight cancellations, grounded jets, freight companies with deficient shipments & shifts in supply chains crushed the prevailing standards and way of doing things to the ground recently. All the industries including Hotshot truckers have to reassess their supply chains to ensure the sleek flow of their materials, products, and even staff.
It demands flexibility for the organizations and individuals to think out of the box, beyond their rooted management styles, and foster ones with flexibility & agility. This requires hotshot drivers to face more uncertainties in their jobs, looking for new opportunities, new clients, new technologies, new business sectors, new revenue streams, new employees who are open to new technologies, etc. Therefore, to survive, it necessitates embracing change out of the comfort zone.
9. Integrating Legislative Protocols is Crucial
2020 was a crucial year for the transport industry in terms of the legislature. It caused a gamut of alterations in legal protocols challenging many national transport firms across the country with drastic shifts in state & provincial legislature.
To survive, hotshot truckers need to adjust the changes effectively & efficiently. It requires them to overcome the lack of communication. Particularly, tracking processes through digital means and process automation are appraised practices in the industry in response to better face legal protocols dictated. Further, procedural reporting checklists are proposed to be a viable solution to align jurisdictive procedures well.
10. Adopting Digital Automation is an Inevitability
We live in an era, where we experience most of our paperwork are converted to digital reports.
Some Common Digital Reports Replacing Paper
- COVID-19 Daily Declaration
- Equipment Condition Report
- Fleet Repair Request
- Operator Walk Around Checklist
- Pre/Post-Trip Inspections
- Vehicle Accident Report
- Vehicle Condition Report
When the existing staff stems from conventional traditions and the whole work culture is accustomed to that, organizations face a transition trauma in evolving the business to digital form. It costs time, effort & money to change their mindset to be adjusted to accept technology to train them on the use of modern tools but it makes work easy. For example, technology such as pre-delivery checklists, vehicle safety audits, or any of the examples in the list above are pre-templated for you on the 1st Incident Reporting mobile application.
A progressive transformation needs to implement new but ideal digital automation practices into the existing framework. The success or the failure of the renewed system depends upon the extent to which the workers are in a position to adopt & embrace the changes. Consequently, all these practices derive the efficiency of the workplace, enhancing the integration of work completion. Especially, the results of bypassing paper documentation through digital solutions are phenomenal.