All posts by admin

History Of The Trucking Industry

By admin on

The trucking industry as we know it, began at the turn of the twentieth century with the invention of the motorized truck. Motorized vehicles were competition for the railroad industry and became a major factor in the increase of land transportation of goods throughout the United States. The development of fuel also contributed to the increased use of trucks. As motor technology advanced and improved, there was a natural progression for the construction of paved roads. As a result, there were regulations set by the state and federal government that were to be adhered to when moving freight.

Prior to the use of trucks, trains were the most efficient mode of transporting goods because it had the capacity to accommodate bulk. Trucks were initially used to deliver items to remote locations that were inaccessible for the train. The first boom in the usage of trucks occurred during the 1920s. At this time, roads were improving and made delivery locations more accessible. Eventually more durable tires replaced the rubber tires and trucks were made larger in order to carry more goods while providing comfort to the driver.

The first trucks were extremely heavy and had crude mechanisms. Initially they were only providing delivery and hauling to the city. This restriction was due in large part because the trucks could not handle the pothole and unpaved roads. The Automobile Club of America put on the very first United States contest for commercial vehicles; the goal of the test was to examine the reliability, speed and capacity of the truck. Excited by the results of the contest, manufacturers were to meet the demand for trucks and the use of trucks for freight transportation flourished.

The trucking industry as we know it was still in its infancy when the Great Depression hit and a number of trucking companies were forced to close their operations. The companies who survived were able to benefit from the repeal of Prohibition, which also occurred during a time of economic recovery. In 1935, Congress passed the Motor Carrier Act; this act halted the legislative mudslinging between the rail and automotive providers and provided structure for the industry. At that time, the federal government became an investor into the railroad industry, which happened to have also from the depression, as well as from the emerging auto transport industry.

The Motor Carrier Act set regulations for freight-hauling. The act limited the hours that could be driven. It also mandated the classification of freight that could be carried. The owners of the trucking companies became concerned that the new regulations would compromise their competitive advantage over established rail companies. As infrastructures were improved, driver demand increased and opened up opportunity for new businesses to enter the market.

The trucking industry is a key player in the American economy through the transportation of raw materials, produce, and finished goods. Trucks are also vital to the construction industry when large amounts of materials are needed for a project. Currently, the American trucking industry is responsible for most of the movement of freight and will continue to be essential for US manufacturing and construction.

Under the regulation of ICC, companies who have for-hire trucks were required to apply for a license if they wanted like to enter the interstate markets. The guidelines were strict and licenses were granted only if it could be proven that there was a need for additional capacity. The rates, which used to be an agreement between the trucker and the customer, were put in the hands of bureaus. The rate bureaus are owned and administered by participating carriers. The bureaus job is to analyze costs and initiate pricing standards and competitive rates within the industry. In 1980, Congress put through a trucking deregulation bill. The goal of the bill was to increase competition and this competition resulted in reduced shipping costs for customers.

Prior to 1983, truck size and weight limitations were set by individual states. The federal government pushed for legislation that set limitations on the interstate highway system. In addition to increasing the size and weight limitations on truck, the law also resulted in an increase of the national gas tax and increased fees on the industry. Currently, the trucking industry is responsible for paying roughly half of all state and federal road user taxes.

How To Start A Window Washing Business

By admin on

Washing windows is one of the best service businesses to start, because it requires no lengthy instruction, has low startup costs and is always in demand. Residential windows require cleaning every 3-4 months, commercial windows more routinely.

There are two main markets for a window washing service – residential and commercial. Most window washers focus on a particular niche market – storefronts, for example – and target potential customers and prospects in that niche. Others, mainly in smaller communities, can handle both commercial and residential work easily.

Before you jump into the window washing business, it’s essential that you look at it clearly, warts and all. It is still a low-tech business, although technology has had a big impact in some areas. As an example, a water-fed pole system allows an operator to clean two, three and even four story windows from the ground, saving the time and trouble of climbing up and down a ladder. Another innovation, the Tucker pole system, also allows one person, standing safely on the ground, to wash and rinse windows up to 45′ high.

Technology aside, washing windows is not a glamorous business, like writing apps for a iPad or working on Wall Street. It can get demanding when the weather turns nasty too. So when you reveal to your friends that you plan to start a window washing business, don’t expect a round of applause.

The upside is that you will have a very profitable business that will generate income very quickly – particularly when you consider that most residential and small commercial jobs are paid on the spot when you complete the work. Moreover, you can operate a window washing business on a part-time or full-time basis. This flexibility makes window washing an attractive business to a wide variety of people.

Do you have what it takes?

Window washing is a service business, so you’ll need a willingness to please customers and the desire to perform a thorough job so each window sparkles and customers call back for more.

The business skills needed to launch and run this business are quite basic. You’ll will need to be able to manage your time efficiently and have the ability to build relationships with your customers.

Most window washers are home-based businesses, which makes sense. After all, your customers have no reason to visit your shop, since all work is done at their location, not yours. Although operating out of your home makes perfect sense for most, your town may have regulations that control commercial activities in residential areas. So before you obtain a business license, determine what regulations govern home-based businesses and adjust your business operations to be in compliance.

Startup expenses for a window washing service are reasonable. You’ll need to purchase a window cleaning bucket, squeegees in several sizes, rags, cleaning solution and a basic ladder for two-story work.

To advertise your business around town, order a pair of magnetic signs for your vehicle. Magnetic signs can be easily removed if your vehicle is used for business and personal use. However, you’ll find many prospects will approach you when you’re “off-duty,” in a grocer’s parking lot, for example, so consider leaving your signage on at all times. There are hundreds of web-based businesses that make economical magnetic sighs for vehicles – just do a web search for “magnetic signs for vehicles.”

Pricing your window washing service could be a challenge initially, without experience. If your price is too low, you’re robbing yourself of income and profits that you ought to get. If you price too high, you may lose the job to someone else, or even to the customer, who may decide, “If it’s that expensive, I should do it myself.” To get a feel for pricing, practice washing windows for friends and neighbors at no charge.

Time yourself for each window and take notes. Is it a first or second story window, does it have multiple panes, and so on. Then, multiply the time per window by the hourly rate you expect to earn to reach a price. For example, if a window takes 6 minutes, and you expect to earn $ 50 an hour, then 60 minutes (one hour) divided by 6 equals $ 5. Make sure to add enough to cover your overhead costs, including vehicle costs, materials, administrative expenses such as bookkeeping, taxes, et cetera. After a few months, you’ll have it down.

How’s your image?

The image you project is an important marketing tool. Take into account how your look to others. Here are some areas to consider:

*Because your work is all done on site at the customer’s home or business, the appearance of your vehicle is very important. Your vehicle represents your company on wheels, which communicates to others a lot about your company. A clean, well-maintained vehicle, regardless of it’s years, tells others you take pride in your work.
* Are you neat and clean, wearing clothing that identifies your business, like a hat or golf shirt with your company name?
* Do your documents look professional? It costs next to nothing to have professional estimate and invoice forms printed, which will do wonders for your professional image.

Your customers also form an impression about your image, positive or negative, in how you do on the job and in following up. Here are some tips to help you enhance your business image so it sparkles as brightly as the windows you’ve washed:

* Show up on time. If you show up when you promised, your customers will appreciate it, especially if they have to be home so you can wash the interior windows.
* Be organized. Consider the most efficient way to handle each job so you don’t waste time. Carry extra squeegees and other items that wear so you will always have the right tool for every window. If you’re doing second story windows, make sure you have the right sized ladder with you.
* Return phone calls quickly. Most window washers find a business cellular phone is best for always being available, even while on the job. Make things easy for your customers to reach you – it’s expected in today’s connected world.
* Always say thanks. Thank your customers when the job is done and they hand you a check. Send a basic thank you card to customers after finishing a job, with a note mentioning that you’ve got them on the calendar for the next cleaning in XX days, and you’ll call to confirm about a week before it’s scheduled. A holiday card to each customer works the same way to build a relationship. Time the holiday card to arrive around the first of December – so your card will be distinct and be not forgotten. Always include a business card to make it easier for customers to reach you.

Anyone can wash windows. To turn it into a successful business requires much more than just a good squeegee technique. Professionalism will help you get there, so use the ideas within this article to polish your own image and build a legion of loyal customers for your new window washing business.

Banner Designs For Retail Clothing Stores

By admin on

There are very few things in this world that people consider essential or needs of human beings. Food, water, shelter and clothing are the four main necessities that humans have are will always be in constant need of. Due to the need of clothing for hundreds of millions of people, the clothing industry has always managed to thrive no matter the financial situation of a country or any specified area. All of the success of the industry has led to the industry becoming one of the most competitive in the world. Clothing retail stores have no choice but to advertise to promote their business if they want to remain competitive with their competitors. This means that clothing stores need to be advertising their business both on and off the internet to reach as many potential customers as possible.

Lets start with how a retail clothing store owner can advertise their business off the internet. The most effective form of advertising they can use is making television commercials and having them displayed in the local area of their store. This is a very effective method but also very costly and many businesses cannot afford to make commercials to advertise. Luckily, there are other, cheaper ways that they can advertise. Advertisements can be placed in the classified section of newspapers at little to no cost to the advertiser. They can also send out weekly coupons in magazines in the mail and only pay for the cost of paper and mass shipping which is very cheap.

Making brochures is also a very effective method of advertising off the internet for clothing stores. Brochures give the company the opportunity to show several different styles and types of clothing to all different kinds of people in order to reach the most potential customers possible.

Now that you know how to advertise off the internet, lets talk about what you can do to advertise and promote your offline clothing store on the internet. The best way to advertise online for clothing stores is to use banner advertisements. These are the ads that you see every day when browsing the internet. They are usually at the top of a webpage and stretch out across the top of almost an entire page. When a user clicks on one of them, they are automatically redirected to the advertisers website. These kinds of advertisements can significantly benefit an offline clothing store.

The best part about banner ads is the amount of targeting that they allow an advertiser to use when displaying their ads. When using these ads, an advertiser can choose to target the ads by location and the specific interests and internet behavior of specific users. Obviously for an offline business, location is the best way to target their audience. They can choose to target by continent, country, city, town, county, state, zip code, district, latitude and longitude, ip address or within a certain amount of miles from their stores location. Targeting ads towards interested users in specific locations will reach a stores target market and create new and repeat customers for the store owner.

Top 3 Reasons For Fail Background Check

By admin on

Finding a job in this economy can be a daunting and difficult task. In a competitive job market employers become more stringent and will disqualify applicants that provide incorrect or incomplete information about themselves over the past 10 years. When employers find discrepancies between the information you provided and what they find out in your background check report, they assume that you are either disorganized, less-than-truthful, or just plain dishonest. Whatever the case, the result is that you dont receive a job offer. Thats why you must secure your place among the top candidates by making sure you will pass your pre-employment background check.

As a private detective who specializes in background investigations, I want to share with you what I have learned over the past 15 years in conducting tens of thousands of background checks for small, medium, large and fortune 500 companies. Even though I charge $150 an hour for consulting services, I am providing my expert advice to you free of charge because I want you to succeed. If I can help even just a few people find a job and secure their familys future, I will feel like I am doing my part to help get our countrys economy back on track.

So lets jump right in to what you came here to for: the top 3 reasons why applicants fail their background check.

REASON #1: FAILURE TO DISCLOSE A CRIMINAL RECORD

You know that little question on every job application with a checkbox next to it that says something like Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Well you need to know the correct answer to this question before you check the box. So let me clarify what this question means to employers: what they really want to know is if you are honest and trustworthy. They can and will find out if you have a criminal record when they conduct the background check, no matter how you answer. So if you say no, and you have a criminal conviction on your record, what you are really demonstrating is that you are not honest and cannot be trusted.

If you do have a criminal conviction and you answer yes to the question, you are giving yourself the best possible chance of getting a job offer by being honest and straightforward. Provide accurate details about the charge, the date, and the county of conviction. When the background check comes back, the employer will see that you have given all of the complete and accurate details up front. This shows you are being open and honest, and that you are taking responsibility for what you did and moving on with your life. You would be surprised to know how often employers are willing to overlook criminal records with applicants that have good solid experience or a winning personality. You can increase your chances of this happening by applying for positions where your conviction is unrelated to the duties of the job you are applying for. For instance, if you were convicted of a DUI, I wouldnt apply for a driving position, or if you were convicted of theft I wouldnt apply for a cash handling position.

REASON #2: INACCURATE OR INCOMPLETE WORK HISTORY

Employers want to see accurate and complete information concerning your former employers. The reason for this is again a matter of principal. The employers perspective is that they want honest and organized employees, and if you dont remember the details of your job experience, then why are you listing it on your resume or application? And they do have a point. If you are a very organized person, you probably already have a document prepared with all of the details concerning all of the jobs you have held over the past 10 years. For the rest of us, gathering up all of this information is a near-impossible task, especially if you have job-hopped quite a bit. So whats the next best thing to having a master document with the details of all your previous work experience? Have a professional background screener compile one for you. That way when you fill out an application you can be confident that you will have the exact same information in front of you as the employer will receive after completing your background check.

The information that you need to compile before filling out a job application consists of the information that is asked on most application forms, such as the ex-employers name, address and telephone number, exact dates of employment, your job title per the employer, (not the one you were in theory or the one you thought you deserved) your beginning and ending pay rates, and your reason for leaving as recorded by the employer. Notice the common theme here is that your information should match exactly the information that your ex-employer is going to release when asked. This strategy pays dividends many times over, and will help you to avoid failing a background check for providing inaccurate or incomplete work history information.

REASON #3:FICTITIOUS, EXAGGERATED OR INACCURATE EDUCATION CLAIMS

Employers base pay scales, individual pay rates, job descriptions and job requirements in part on educational qualifications. Even though many job positions require a certain level of education only as a minimum requirement, employers take offense when an applicant misrepresents or overstates their education, because it violates their sense of fair play. If you dont meet the minimum requirements, then you shouldnt be applying for the position. Employers also see this as an economic issue; if they are going to be paying you a certain wage based in part on educational credentials you dont actually have, then they are paying for something that they never received. No company is this economy wants to feel like they are being defrauded.

That is why it is so important to be very specific in stating your education credentials. Dont say you graduated if you didnt, even if you were just one credit hour short. If you attended a trade school for 8 months, dont say you were there for a year. If you graduated with a 2.5 grade average, dont say you had a 3.0. If you have a GED, say so, but dont say that you graduated high school; its not the same. If you never attended college, dont say that you attended a university that burned down in 1980. Professional investigators like myself, who do background checks for a living will see right through it, and relay that to our client who requested the background check.

Luckily, you can easily obtain a copy of your background check online to uncover what a potential employer will find before they find it. Instead of filling out an application wondering if you remembered to write down everything correctly, you can just look at your own master document compiled by a professional background screening firm.

A word to the wise: there are thousands of websites that sell instant background checks online. These are not professional background screening firms that conduct investigations for large employers. Most of them are just information brokers that sell instant data that has been circulating around the web for years. Make sure that you select a professional background screening firm or private detective agency that does on-request delayed searches, which are researched once you place your order and not instant results.

The bottom line is that in order to be safe, you need to know exactly what a prospective employer is going to find on your background check report. A professional background screening firm that deals with the public can cut out all the work of obtaining the background information about you, and organize it into a report that you can receive in your email box. Instead of having to go to city hall, the courthouse, your high school and other places that hold this information, you can get it all online by ordering a pre-employment background check on yourself.

Good luck and success on your job hunt!

Acquiring Capital For A Business

By admin on

Beginning a new business is an extremely difficult venture. The amount of time, effort, work, and money it takes just to start up is a wonder to think about. There are several different things to think about, for example what type of company you are going to start? Are you going to hire employees or do the work yourself? What type of professional licenses are you going to have to have in order to start the venture you really want to start? While all of these questions are important, one of the most important questions to ask when thinking about establishing your own company is: Where will I get the money to make all this happen? There are many different sources for money to begin an enterprise. Some are using savings you may have accrued, acquiring a business loan, or having investors.

One source of capital to use for starting a business is if you have managed to save money. Many people go through life putting away amounts of unused or extra money in different savings accounts or other interest-bearing ventures. Using cash you have saved up as capital for your business is a great way to help stay out of debt. Many times, people that start a company on a shoe string or almost non-existent budget, they wind up going into a large amount of debt very quickly. Having a resource of money that is set aside in case of an emergency is a great way to be sure you have something to fall back on. This is the most ideal situation when starting your own business. If you have money saved that can be used as a resource for start up costs, this may be preferable to starting a line of credit or taking out loans.

If you arent fortunate enough to have saved the money necessary to start your own business, the next best alternative may be to do what many other owners do: take out a business loan. This requires a lot more than one might thing. It is much easier to get a personal loan than it is to get a business loan. With a professional loan, you need to submit professional plans on how you will pay back the money and take other specified steps to satisfy the terms for the loan. If you can indeed receive a loan to start your endeavor, it will help you toward your ultimate goal of opening.

Another way to achieve the funds for starting your own company is to round up investors who would be willing to provide you with the means necessary. This sounds a lot easier said than done, but you would be surprised what amounts of money people are willing to put up for the introduction of a worthwhile service or product. Always be cautious about using investors, however, because once they become an investor, they are typically in partial ownership of the company you have begun with their money. Make sure things are laid out very clearly in the terms of the contract of such an alliance.

There are several ways to build a business from the ground up. One of the things you must think about is how you will get the capital for such a venture. By using money you have saved, acquiring a loan, or rounding up investors for your project, you can have the money required to get off to an off and running start for your new career.