Regardless of whether you are just starting out in your shipping business or whether your shipping business has been going a good long time, it is inevitable that there will be times when work drops off, and you are left twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do next.
Well, obviously, what you will need to do is find some work to keep your business going, and there are some very different ways of getting your shipping business moving and earning your money again.
Offline sources
When it comes to offline ways of getting in more shipping business, you are looking at the more traditional methods of drumming up business. This means that you should be looking at placing adverts in your local newspapers and magazines, posting leaflets through local businesses’ doors, and even residential buildings as well.
You could also take advantage of the local radio stations, as many businesses have the local stations playing in the background for their workers to listen to while they work.
Online sources
There are also online ways of getting shipping work, such as advertising on social media platforms or using your business’s SEO to its best potential. However, it is not all about the customer contacting you in response to one of your adverts. There are ways you can see and evaluate work to decide whether or not it is a job that you want to do before any contact is made.
This may sound too good to be true, but in using websites that offer a load board facility to find shipping work, you can do just that. This is where customers, whether they are businesses or members of the public, post their shipping jobs. As someone that is interested in taking a job, you would go on there and quote how much you would do that particular job for them. If they are happy with your price, then you are successful and get the shipping job. However, if they are not, they may provide you with a counteroffer or wait until someone offers them another price.
Indeed, load board sites are a very good move if you happen to find yourself on a long-haul journey with a full load but coming back completely empty. By using the services of load board sites, you may very well find that you can have a full or part load on the way back, which will mean that you are earning for both trips rather than just one.
Via reputation
Once you get yourself established, you may find that you have regular customers that are happy to contact you directly about the shipping services that you offer. This is a highly desirable place to be, especially if they happen to offer regular work.
You may also find that by keeping happy regular customers that you then attract more customers due to your local reputation increasing and your customers recommending your services via word of mouth to others that have shipping work available.
However, in order to have a good reputation, you are going to have to make sure that your deliveries get to their destination within the desired time frame, that all your deliveries are in good order without any damage happening to them in transit and that the customer service which you offer is without fault.
