How Factoring Can Be a Crucial Ingredient in the Success of Trucking Companies
Apex Experts: Mike Thrasher Is Ready to Build Pivotal, Big Picture Partnerships
Knowing how to stabilize your trucking company’s cash flow is just as important as knowing which loads to haul. You want to keep your company growing, so you need to be smart about who you do business with – that includes factors, quick pays, and even banks. Mike Thrasher, Chief Sales Officer for Apex Capital, brings 20 years of experience in sales. He understands the funding issues facing many startups and small-to-medium size trucking companies. He’s here to shed light on the benefits of using a factoring company as a trusted partner.
What is freight factoring?
It’s the purchase of receivables at a discount. So instead of the trucking company providing the service, billing the customer, and then waiting 30 days, 40 days or more to get paid, they’re going to provide the service and send the invoice to the factoring company. The factoring company is then going to provide them the money against those invoices at a discount. Factoring gives these companies the cash flow needed, and the biggest benefit is it eliminates the guess work.
Factoring stabilizes their cash flow. If they’re generating X amount of revenue per week, they’re sending it to the factoring company, the factoring company provides the funding. They know exactly when to expect money. The factor should be also assisting with other things such as credit on their customers, so when they are looking to do business with new customers, they can determine through our free online credit checks if they want to do business with that customer or not.
A lot of these companies don’t have the ability to go in and get traditional financing through a local bank. They look to us to help provide that, which is critical to their success. The bank is going to look for historical information and if you’re just getting started, you don’t have historical information. Some trucking companies, as they grow and get bigger, can transition over to a bank line if that makes sense. We’ve had plenty of those over the years, larger companies that started small, then grew over time and later transitioned over. But I think about all the back-office stuff that we do – credit, collections, reporting – all that stuff they must then replace for a price. Now they have this extra expense, which may not work for them, that Apex can do for them as part of their factoring agreement.
What makes Apex different?
I’ve been here 20 years and what really makes us different starts at the top. It starts with David Baker and Dean Tetirick, who decided to do the right thing for clients and employees by investing in people and training and systems – marketing, too. I’ve worked for other companies that weren’t willing to do that.
That takes a commitment because once you start, you can’t stop. There’s no going back. You keep forging ahead and figure out where you’re going from here. We grew from 20-30 employees to where we are today. Again, that starts at the top and flows down. It’s about making a commitment to provide quality service to our clients. It’s about working with one another and about the way we treat one another each day. All that really separates us. Look at our reviews. We’ve built an outstanding reputation over the last 25, 26 years.
What is Apex’s 24/7 Factoring and how does it help truckers?
It’s something that no one else is really doing and that’s always a plus. It can really help the smaller carriers, the one truck, two truck company that needs money after-hours when they’ve delivered a load. They need cash for the next load because they need to put fuel in the tank. They are able to send those invoices after hours, weekends, during bank holidays such as Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Independence Day, even Christmas Day and get funded.
It’s a great tool at a time when fuel prices might be up, and freight rates might be down. That’s when they are under a real cash crunch. They can do this and get funded instead of having to wait until Monday or the next day. They can help themselves and it makes sense.
24/7 Factoring is a real nice service we can talk about upfront with potential clients. We have our great fuel discounts on the Apex TCS Fuel Card, we have our free load board, NextLOAD.com, and we have instant funding with blynk®. It’s all these things that we can talk about that will get people’s attention.
What are the benefits of factoring vs. quick pays?
There are costs when using quick pays. If a carrier gets a quick pay advance on a $1,000 load, it’s going to cost money. They are going to make less than $1,000 if they’re getting a quick pay and they’re also going to pay a fee. And sometimes those quick pays aren’t as quick as they probably should be or need to be. If you’re factoring with us and utilizing our fuel card, that $1,000 load with us can make more money.
That’s because the discounts you get on fuel will pay for the factoring fee and then some. That’s quite a bit of difference.
Also, you must understand those brokers. They look at quick pays as an additional risk. So, to cover their risk brokers may offer those loads for less because they are giving the carrier money before they get paid for the load. What if the carrier doesn’t deliver the load? The trucker is still going to get paid. If the carrier gets a quick pay and then suddenly days later there’s a dispute on the load or the load arrives damaged, how does the broker get that money back? That’s why brokers are going to price that load for the risk. So, it’s not an optimal way to do business.
Carriers are going to have to decide what makes sense for them. That’s why part of our sales strategy is to be more of a consultant and talk them through these issues. We always want them to enter a business relationship with us as a partner. We’re here to help guide and support them.
Finding the right factoring partner can be the key to growing your trucking company. Apex factoring is here to help you manage your cash flow with a variety of valuable tools as well as excellent customer service and back-office support. Visit our website or give us a call at 855-369-2739.