As business owners and truck drivers, we try to save money any way we can in order to improve our net revenue. One of our largest expenses is fuel. We strive to get every mile possible from every drop of the costly fossil fuel. A lot of drivers will even buy products to help save on fuel consumption.
This variable expense can be one of the most difficult to wrangle in for some drivers. Usually, it boils down to three key areas to consider - time, speed, and/or machine efficiency. Time, we cannot control. We have to decide whether we have time to slow down and save fuel or not. Speed, related to time, we can control. We can choose to slow down and save on our fuel costs or in the absence of enough time, we must press on at or near speed limits to arrive at our destination in a timely manner. Machine efficiency we can control. We can purchase, maintain and improve our trucks to get the best possible fuel mileage for our operations. Tunnel vision (only worried about fuel costs) can have you so focused on a singular task that you may miss other ones.
While we strive daily to limit our petroleum consumption costs, too many overlook big savings on fixed expenses.
One of these fixed expenses is insurance. How often do you review your truck’s insurance? Insurance rates can vary greatly from one company to another. Shop around to find the best rate available to you.
Now that you have found the best rate you could get, make sure to review your policy each year before renewal. As the value of your truck goes down, you can reduce your comprehensive/collision policy to reflect the current value of your truck. These annual reductions can add up to substantial yearly savings. That new truck you bought last year does not have the same value this year, so why are you paying for coverage that exceeds the payout, if you should have a total loss?
Insurance is one of the necessary expenses we all must endure, but we can control some of the cost if we will just take a few minutes every year to review our policies and make adjustments as needed. Updating the policy for current values and even raising deductibles can greatly impact your insurance policy rates.
It’s a good idea to review your fixed expenses on a regular basis. As many drivers become fixated on daily expenses, like fuel, many of them tend to just pay fixed expenditures and move on. It‘s possible to be fixated on variables and focused on fixed expenses with good bookkeeping.