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How To Start A Trucking Company?

To become a truck owner in the US, and even more so to start offering your services to customers, you will not only have to pass “tests” from US law but also comply with all tax requirements and fees from the state.

You need to be prepared for the fact that you will manage the company yourself, you must offer a higher level of customer service, or at least a level no worse than what is on the market, even if the company has only one truck, and you will constantly looking for customers.

In general, finding clients is always a risk for business: people tend to prefer older and more well-known firms, which can complicate the cash flow into the company. To establish your trucking business in the States, you must go through several official stages of its registration.

Getting a CDL

CDL is a Commercial driver’s license, a commercial driver’s license that can be obtained after you have passed a medical examination, passed the driving itself, and also acquired a permit (given the theoretical part of driving in three stages).

You can learn all this in tracking schools. On average, training lasts about four weeks and costs $3,000.

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Development of a business plan

Assess your options. It is no coincidence that people most often open the truck business in the United States with experience in this area: former drivers who worked for another company or those who were more or less familiar with this business.

Opening a company means you must keep accounts, enter into contracts with brokers, pay taxes, and dispatch and search for cargo. All this is the work of individual specialists who will have to pay for accounting for trucking business, paperwork, dispatch services, and others. It’s not easy to become a dispatcher yourself.

Company opening process

The company can be registered online using a personal account by going to the state website. Here you can decide for yourself in what form the business will be conducted: LLC, INC, or others;

  • You will also need an EIN (Employer identification number), which can be requested at irs.gov.
  • MC-number is needed if you provide paid transportation services.

Truck Registration

To register a truck and obtain a license plate, you must present the relevant documents to the local office of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMW).

You also have to pay for registration, and the payment depends on how many miles you plan to drive in each state and additional fees from the state itself. Payment is made once a year.

Insurance

Truck insurance in the United States consists of three parts:

  • truck and trailer insurance;
  • liability insurance;
  • cargo insurance.

The cost of insurance is calculated from the length of your work, the absence of fines, violations in your driver’s license, and the time for which the insurance is purchased. The price also includes the cost and year of manufacture of the truck. You have to pay once a year.

Tax on the use of fuel and roads

IFTA (International Fuel Tax Agreement) is a tax levied by each state four times a year. Before paying tax, you must enter into an agreement with the IFTA from the state where you live and where you do business.

Liabilities and taxes after opening a business

After opening a business, it is essential to consider additional taxes and obligations that you will have:

  • $550 Annual Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax, payable once a year
  • contribution to the system of the Unified State Registration of Vehicles (Unified Carrier Registration)

The best solution would be outsourcing accounting services for your trucking business. If you decide to do all the paperwork yourself, you will have little time left for driving and dealing with loads.

Here are the nine steps to starting a trucking business in the USA. Everything else, in particular the development of the company, its profit, and reputation, depends on the owner himself and the team he will recruit.

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