Freight Brokerage Business. The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc.

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      If you’re working with a carrier or broker now and are planning to quit in order to start your own brokerage, don’t assume the customers you have a good relationship with will automatically follow you. It may happen, but if you’re counting on that customer for early revenue, you could be in for a rude awakening.

      Don’t limit your specialization plan to the commonly accepted areas. Instead, find your own niche. Tucker, for example, does some interesting work for retailers. One major national chain hires his company to handle the distribution of point-of-sale promotional displays that have to be delivered to hundreds of stores on the same day. It’s a move that’s important but not frequent enough for the retailer to maintain the required expertise in-house. Other big businesses use Tucker’s company to manage shipments related to store openings and closings.

Who’s Minding the Store?

      Even following deregulation, the transportation industry comes under the regulation of a number of different agencies. The least-regulated cargo is intrastate freight—shipments moving within the borders of a single state. That freight is regulated under the laws of the particular state and is also typically regulated by the state’s department of transportation, department of business and professional regulation, and/or the department of revenue and taxation.

      For interstate shipments—shipments moving between states—the key regulatory agency prior to 1995 was the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), an independent agency created by Congress in 1887 to regulate commercial activity crossing state lines. The ICC was created in response to turmoil within the railroad industry, and came about after an 1886 Supreme Court ruling that said states could not regulate interstate railroads, which effectively shifted the burden of regulation to the federal government.

      The commission initially possessed limited regulatory powers, but by the early 1950s its jurisdiction extended to all types of surface transportation vehicles and channels. The agency was criticized for regulatory excess and setting artificially high transportation and shipping rates. By the early 1980s, deregulation of transportation industries had stripped the ICC of most of its authority to set rates. In 1995, Congress abolished the ICC and created a Surface Transportation Board (STB) within the Department of Transportation (DOT). The responsibility of the DOT is to perform the small number of regulatory tasks that had remained with the ICC. Today, the primary agencies that oversee motor freight transportation are the STB, DOT, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

Do You Have What It Takes?

      This is not a business for the faint of heart or a shy person who is happiest shuffling papers behind closed office doors or within their cubical. However, courage and an extroverted personality alone won’t guarantee you a successful freight brokerage either. According to Davis, “Anyone involved in operations needs to be able to handle stress, make quick decisions, handle multiple tasks, have a good phone voice, and develop top-notch communication skills. It’s also good to possess some general business knowledge.” You not only need to understand the freight industry, you must also appreciate the business demands your customers face.

      Andrews agrees that communication skills and a solid foundation in the industry are important for brokers. You need to be able to speak industry jargon to demonstrate your knowledge. “The worst thing you could do is call a shipper and start fumbling on the phone,” he says. “He’s never going to give you any freight because he’s going to know right away that you have no knowledge of the business, and he would not trust his goods being moved with you.”

      Williamson says you’ve got to be “a good all-around person.” That means being comfortable with the financial side, the sales side, and the operations side. Understanding how to leverage technology and specialized software designed for use by freight brokers has also become increasingly more important within the past five years.

      The TIA’s Voltmann says, “The future for intermediaries is very bright as asset-owning carriers concentrate on what they do best, and shippers concentrate on their core competencies. Shippers and carriers need the innovation and expertise intermediaries provide. The result will be continued improvements, which will mean more choices for consumers and lower costs.”

      Start Your Own Freight Brokerage Business is an easy-to-read resource that will introduce you to this business opportunity. However, it’s only a starting point if you opt to pursue this type of career path. How you proceed should depend on your goals, financial resources, existing education, the amount of additional job-specific training, and general business education you’re able and willing to acquire, as well as your willingness to build your own business from scratch over time (as opposed to working for an existing freight brokerage business, potentially as an agent or as an employee).

      If you opt to pursue starting your own freight brokerage business, one of the first things you’ll want to do is obtain proper training. Simply by visiting your favorite internet search engine, such as Google (www.google.com) or Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com), enter the phrase “freight broker training” within the search field, to learn about the various schools and organizations that offer this type of training.

      As you’ll discover, you can participate in online-based classes at your СКАЧАТЬ