The numbers behind the wheel. Why trucking companies leave money on the road.
Trucking is one of the most financially complex industries in the country: fuel exposure, settlement structures, equipment cycles, volatile claims, and lane profitability that looks fine in aggregate and bleeds at the detail level. The question isn't whether your business has financial leakage. Every trucking company does. The question is how much, and whether anyone is looking for it.
What changes inside your business.
Pricing and contract discipline
Lane, customer, and contract-level review to find the 12 to 24 month deals quietly locking in losses, and fuel surcharge structures that don't recover real exposure.
Margin recovery
Systematic review of fuel, driver, insurance, claims, overhead, and leasing costs. The leakage is always there. We find it and fix it.
A/R as a working capital asset
Redesigned collections processes that have cut outstanding A/R by 60%+ and freed meaningful cash without adding headcount.
Close in days, not weeks
Compress month-end from 45-day-old news to a real-time view leadership can actually run the business on.
Finance and operations that speak trucking.
Jon Guastella has served as CFO or Director of Finance directly inside transportation and logistics organizations, including a major regional LTL and freight carrier and one of the country's top specialty transport operators. You work directly with him on every engagement.
What we see almost every time: month-end close takes weeks, so decisions are made on data that's already old. Surprise write-offs make budgeting impossible. Cash flow feels unpredictable even in strong revenue months. Fuel, claims, and driver costs are tracked but never modeled against actual pricing. Customer contracts haven't been renegotiated to reflect what it actually costs to serve them today. A/R is a pile of invoices, not a managed working capital asset.
Real engagement results: month-end close compressed from 48 days to 10. Monthly A/R reduced from $500K to $60K at an automotive logistics operator. Claims costs cut from $44K to $1K per month through operational controls. EBITDA grown from $96K to $2.3M in the first 12 months, with margins expanding from 10% to 35%. At a regional LTL carrier: 30%+ bottom-line improvement over the previous record year and 60% reduction in outstanding A/R.
What you can expect.
- 30-day diagnostic: P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, pricing, A/R aging, and cost structure
- FP&A build-out: budgeting, rolling forecasts, variance reporting
- Pricing and contract portfolio analysis with renegotiation roadmap
- Per-truck, per-driver, per-lane, and per-customer profitability
- Fleet expansion, replacement, and equipment financing decision support
- Weekly and monthly cash flow forecasting
- Month-end close optimization and owner financial reporting
- Financing prep: banking, equipment financing, SBA, growth capital
Best suited for operators who:
- Revenue is growing but profits are not keeping pace
- You're not sure which contracts, lanes, or customers are actually profitable
- Cash flow feels unpredictable despite decent revenue
- You haven't had a real budget or forecast in years, or ever
- Your close process takes more than two weeks
- You're thinking about buying equipment, acquiring a competitor, or selling the business
Frequently asked.
- Do you only work with asset-based carriers?
- No. We work across asset-based trucking, LTL, regional carriers, freight brokerages, last-mile, intermodal, and specialty transport. The financial fundamentals translate, even when the operating model differs.
- We're not a big carrier. Isn't senior financial leadership for the larger fleets?
- That assumption is one of the most expensive things in trucking. The owners who build great carriers win on relationships, reputation, and operational judgment. Managing fuel, claims, settlement structures, contract pricing, and lane economics alongside that is a full-time job on its own. Senior financial leadership at a fraction of the full-time cost is exactly what we deliver.
- What does a first engagement look like?
- A four-phase model: Diagnose (30-day financial assessment), Build (the FP&A and close infrastructure), Optimize (pricing, contracts, A/R, cost reduction, cash acceleration), and Partner (ongoing CFO-level advisory on capital allocation, equipment, financing, and major events including acquisition or sale).
A complimentary 30-minute strategy call for trucking and transportation owners.
No pitch. No pressure. An honest conversation about where your business stands financially and where it could be.