A Good Financial Advisor and a Dedicated Fleet Provider Have Much in Common

In today’s blog post, we’re sharing a comparative piece written by one of our longest-tenured dedicated fleet experts, Steve Dabbs.  The parallels he draws between a Financial Advisor and a Dedicated Fleet Provider will make you pause — and smile!

Here’s what Steve has to say:

I’m often grateful for the steady-Eddie influence of my financial advisor when the financial market is in turmoil. The calming influence has saved me from quite a few heart attacks and many times reaffirmed the wisdom of letting experts be experts. When I was compelled to make drastic decisions, my advisor’s informed insight, experience and holistic view has saved me. 

With assets on the line and my family’s secure future depending on me, the approach of having a financial advisor applying their expertise and resources in ways I can’t makes so much sense. I think the same is true when it comes to managing your company’s transportation—it just makes sense to bring the full benefit of the best experts employing the best resources to manage something so critical to the success of your company’s supply chain.

I learned the value of having a financial advisor the hard way—and I learned the value of having a dedicated fleet provider the hard way too. Before I joined TA Dedicated, I ran a private fleet for a large corporation. I know both sides and the similarities between a financial advisor and a dedicated fleet operation first-hand. 

Perhaps the biggest similarity between the two is that you just don’t know what you don’t know. Financial advisors are monitoring the markets all day. They’re doing research into industries and their ears are finely tuned to economic indicators. In exactly the same way, a good dedicated fleet provider is immersed in topics, trends and economic data in a way most transportation managers of private fleets aren’t. They just don’t have the time to follow freight rates, used truck prices and adjust to market forecasts the way a dedicated fleet provider does. 

A good financial advisor brings the best investment ideas and strategies to bear on your assets, and a good dedicated fleet provider brings the best transportation practices to your operations. The knowledge and perspective of a professional with an outside perspective is invaluable in the fresh solutions they bring you from the field. All the knowledge your dedicated fleet provider collects and all the experience they gain providing service for all their other customers are yours to leverage. For TA Dedicated customers, that means years of practice managing fleets for some of the most successful companies in America.    

There are so many directions an investor can go, and they’re changing every day. It’s unreasonable to expect that you’re going to be able to outpace an expert on your own. To be honest, what I came to realize was that if I was spending all day watching stock prices, stewing over what to do and agonizing over when to buy, sell or hold, my real job — and real life—would really suffer. With a financial advisor, I can focus elsewhere because an expert is handling everything for better than I could ever handle it myself.  

It’s no different when it comes to managing your in-house private fleet. Manufacturers typically don’t go into business intending to become trucking companies, and yet when you operate a private fleet, you are for all intents and purposes running a trucking business  — but should you?  The millions of dollars in assets under management come with a huge responsibility to generate ROI and control costs. That can be a huge distraction. When a company focuses too much on transportation at the expense of manufacturing standards, you suddenly have a major headache on your hands.

Working with a dedicated fleet provider enables you to remain focused on your core business. Your dedicated partner is tracking and tracing your shipments for you. They’re finding capacity when drivers don’t show up or tractors break down. Importantly, they’re also measuring and monitoring performance.  

It’s a financial advisor’s job to keep records and report performance. The same applies to a dedicated fleet provider. The discipline of knowing where you stand with regards to your goals is the provider’s priority. That task is often neglected in private fleet operations where it’s easy to become entirely focused on managing day-to-day transportation and the continuous stream of challenges that come up. 

Every transportation program needs Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Fleet assets are expensive. A partner like TA Dedicated brings the commitment and technology to maximize return for shippers’ best benefit. Like a financial advisor, it’s our job to report performance. That helps facilitate continuous improvement.  

Financial advisors and dedicated fleet providers alike play a critical role in long term strategies and helping keep you on track to achieving them. Just like a financial advisor helps an investor keep a cool head during a downturn, a dedicated fleet provider helps you stay focused on growth and development goals while navigating changing market conditions or disruptions.  

There’s always risk when it comes to investing, but a financial advisor has departments of people performing research to rely on to help mitigate that risk. A dedicated fleet provider also has departments managing every aspect of a transportation program – from driver training to safety and compliance standards —- along with proven processes for providing efficient, economical and safe transportation.

The peace of mind that comes from enlisting the support of experts is a tremendous benefit that I have come to greatly appreciate over the years. Back when I was managing a private fleet as well as my own finances, I certainly would have benefitted from that wisdom — and maybe even retired a few years sooner!

Author Profile:

Steve Dabbs is a dedicated fleet expert at TA Dedicated.  He has managed transportation operations both for shippers and carriers and holds a unique understanding of transportation networks from both perspectives. For many years, Steve has worked in business development and values true partnership built on respect, trust and strengths. He’s known for his collaborative approach to working with shippers, and regularly shares insights — whether formally for fleet management or just his smart, pragmatic two cents!

When he’s not working with private fleet operations, Steve spends his time as an avid outdoorsman. Alongside his wife and children, he has always enjoyed camping, fishing, canoeing, or just about anything outdoors.