Til Friday Trucking, led by Michelle Hefner out of Maiden, North Carolina, puts all its chips on a simple bet, an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. The now two-time Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist operates five trucks with two employed drivers and two owner-operators, only runs local, has drivers home most every night and weekend, and guarantees minimum daily pay to available drivers, whether they run or not.
This is one of 10 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will run throughout the next month.
In a trucking industry that so often demands work-life balance be sacrificed at the altar of productivity, Hefner and Til Friday hold the line against weekend work, driver detention, repair bills, and virtually every other irritant in the business with a well-thought-out model that's seen the fleet double its size over the last five years. Since our first profile of the fleet, Michelle Hefner and company have persevered through the storm of high fuel and declining rates with a close eye on fuel discounts and active engagement with customers.
The past 12 months have brought newly intense bid competition from larger trucking companies, she said. "Rates have slipped so much and the bidding has gotten really tough trying to compete with bigger companies -- and you just can’t do it." She's lost some business on account, including a dedicated Monday run that had been like clockwork for Til Friday until recently.
That customer and some others have moved away from traditional annual bidding to every six months, inviting brokers into the second round. That's when she lost the lane, holding the line on the rate she needed to remain profitable.
She makes up for lost work by engaging with other local companies with potential business. "I'm working on picking up a couple more" now, she said in August.
