Bruce Outridge

Time is Money – How Much Have You Spent?

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Bruce

In the business world time is money or so it is said. If you are wasting time you are wasting productivity therefore you are wasting money. That holds true for many of us in business or not. It’s all around us as well, just watch people as they rush around all day trying to catch up with this or trying to complete that. If you really want to tick them off ask them to complete a task for you by a certain time, and watch the fireworks go. Now some people don’t feel that time management can work for them. The excuses I get are that, “too many outside factors affect my time frame”, or “I am paid to work here for eight hours anyway”. Those situations may be true but that doesn’t mean you can’t be productive within that time frame. The group that probably needs time management the most but refuses to use it is the truck drivers of world. As I speak with owner operators across the country through seminars and workshops I hear the same thing, “Dispatch doesn’t give us the time we need” or “we can’t make any money!” That may be true but are you doing the things that are important for your business to be successful by using time wisely? As an entrepreneur working on and in my business I have to make sure I am working productively to not only grow my business, but completing the projects I receive from my clients. I also have to watch the outside factors don’t eat away my time, so I have to remain very scheduled to be productive. So how do you do that without losing sight of your lifestyle?

If you’re an entrepreneur then the best time management technique that I enjoy is through using colour to manage your time. To learn how to do that read my past article on how to “Colour Manage Your Time” which is posted on my blog. However we are talking about the professional driver here and there is certain situations that you will come across that will affect your time. Those outside forces are necessarily under anyone’s control as they may be weather or traffic related. You also have hours of service which tell you how much work you can put in during the day and so on. But as an owner operator you need to keep your eye on the profit and loss of your business and also future stability of the business through productivity. Many owner operators feel they don’t have to work hard or can schedule time off whenever they want, but that isn’t true as those wheels need to keep moving. So how do you plan for all of the unknown factors that affect your schedule?

The first part is to know your breakeven point for the business on a monthly basis. This will be based on the budget you created when starting your operation as an owner operator. How much work do you need? The next step is to make sure you know how much profit you want to make above your costs, is it 5%, 10%, or 20%. Now break your mileage in to the days you have available to work. So let’s say you need to complete 500 miles per day to create the income you want for your business. Your going to lose a certain amount of time unloading, loading, clearing customs, etc so that needs to be factored in to your calculations. If you are waiting to be unloaded for an hour that should be replacing the income for that driving time being lost. So as you factor in all of those situations you will be evaluating your operation to make sure each day you are making the money you have set out to make. Now let’s assume you are working in Canada and have 13 hours of driving time available to put in the miles. Five hundred miles will take approximately 10 hours of driving time. Factor in your breaks and inspections and you should require around 12 hours a day without any major delays. So set your daily limit at 12 hours and you have a safety net of an hour. Just because you can run 13 hours a day doesn’t mean you should. If you are trip planning effectively and managing your time, while watching your business you will find you are more productive with less time. You can also increase your profits by keeping your finger on the pulse of your business. Manage your time effectively on and off duty and you will succeed at time management. Remember time is money!

About the Author

Bruce Outridge is a leadership consultant for the transportation industry and entrpeneurs. To view more information on programs and services available visit http://www.outridge.ca

Marketing Your Plan or Planning to Market

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Bruce

Are you following your game plan?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Bruce

2 Comments

Are you following your game plan? Many people especially entrepreneurs, marketing specialists, artists etc. have great intentions of creating a marketing plan and implementing it, however when they don’t see any results they start to slip into that complacency stage assuming nothing is working. This is very true especially with social media where you hear that all you have to do is sign on and then people will flood to your business. Nothing is further from the truth.

Anyone starting any kind of long term project, business, or marketing effort will need to realize that it may take anywhere from 6 months to a year or more to start seeing the fruits of their labour. The important part is to keep working at it with all of your might. This has happened to me many times through our various business ventures. I remember when I started my blog and every week posted an article wondering if anyone was even reading them. Then out of the blue I would get a reply from someone with a comment. The same thing happened on Twitter when I first signed on, zero followers and I didn’t follow anyone, heck I barely ever signed on. But I put it on my to-do list anyway and kept posting. Today I have 15 people following my comments on Twitter. Sure it’s not huge like Lady Gaga, and I’m sure if I spent even more time telling people what I ate for lunch and giving more comments on subjects I could gain a lot more. My newsletter has just started bringing in clients who have been following me for a year. People are ready to listen at different times in their lives and if you keep moving forward you will be there when they need you.

The point is to keep working, and even more important is that I am following my original game plan for social media marketing. I’ve used social media as an example but I have found the same ground can be gained through other areas by just staying with the plan. Your gut will tell you when you’re ready to grow, so stick to the plan. I enjoy reading my horoscope once in a while, I’ll read it and it will say “things are going on in the background that you don’t know about”. Then down the road I will talk with someone and they will ask “if my ears were burning” because they were recommending me to someone for an opportunity.

So if you’re the type of person to let your guard down when you don’t see things happening then I suggest you take those scrap pieces of paper that you wrote those original goals on ,dust them off and get back to work on them. The success in hitting goals is making sure you follow through with the work part.

The author is a consultant in the transportation and business markets. To learn more about Bruce visit Outridge Consulting Services at http://www.outridge.ca.

Complacency Almost Killed Me!

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Bruce

1 Comment

I’ll never forget it, it was the perfect day for driving. A beautiful sun was overhead, fresh spring air out of my window, dry roads, and nothing but flat land highway with no four wheelers bouncing around like ping pong balls. For a professional truck driver the conditions couldn’t get any better, my truck was clean and I was feeling good. I was west of Chicago on my way to Nebraska and things were good. It was almost to the point where it was getting boring and my mind was starting to drift into that complacency mode where it needed a wake up. That being said, I was thinking of a cup of coffee, not the situation that happened. I was just cruising along at 55 mph when over the C.B. radio I heard the words “Here he comes!” I looked to the left and saw a car spinning out of control through the median from the other side of the highway towards me. The car had been cut off by another passing driver and had lost control. As I quickly evaluated the situation I realized we were going to hit head on if I kept going on the same path because the car was aiming straight across both lanes of ahead of me. I locked up the brakes sending smoke from the tires surrounding my rig and started to steer toward the left lane of the highway. The car coming through the median managed to stop in the right hand lane of the highway on my side. As the traffic on the highway came to a stop and the smoke cleared I rushed out of the truck to see how we ended up expecting to see much damage from the situation. As I came around the front of the truck, the driver of the car began to thank me repeatedly, “Thank you, thank you” he kept saying. His vehicle had stopped 2 inches from the fuel tank on the right hand side of my truck. Had he hit my fuel tank the situation would have been quite different. That car was filled with a family of four going on vacation.

That happened 20 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday. The reason I write about it is many people get into that mode of complacency on a regular basis. Evaluating your conditions, that includes your mindset at the time regularly can be the key between an incident or not. Keeping fresh in your job, your life, and your processes will make the difference between being a statistic and being successful. Complacency almost killed me don’t let it kill you!

For information on programs for your team on complcency visit the presentations page on the Outridge Consulting Service’s website at http://www.outridge.ca