Improve you car hauling business with Gmail.

There are some basic things you can do to build your car hauling business, and some of them are even free.

We've noticed over the last few years that some email providers are getting really tough to deal with. AOL.COM and YAHOO.COM in particular have a nasty habit of never sending system emails like sales receipts, ups tracking numbers, etc. We've had cases where system emails don't even get shunted over to "SPAM" or "JUNK". They never make it to the user's account.

Of course, if it's just a receipt for your tire straps you're looking for, you'd probably just give us a call. But what if it was an update from a load board or a website? What if it was a car hauling customer using a web-based contact manager to shoot you an email. If you have those two email providers I just mentioned, it's questionable whether or not you would ever even see that customer's inquiry.

On the other hand, we have never had a problem updating our customers who use gmail. They updates always go through just fine.

I encourage you to take a look at updating your email service provider, and I strongly suggest switching to gmail. It just works better, pure and simple.

Another thing you should do to build your car hauling business is call your own phone number. Do you have voice mail set up? Does the message convey the fact that you are a business? Is everything working properly? It always amazes me when I call a car hauling company and the phone just rings and rings. Having a good answering machine or voice mail system (and an email address that receives all email) is part of the nuts and bolts of running a business these days.

Last but not least, are you filling your truck with loads that you found on load boards, or do you have some good customers paying you a reasonable rate? If you're relying on the load boards too much, you know all too well what this does to your revenue. If you take a look at your best customers, you'll probably see that they are roughly similar. Is it possible that you could set aside a few hours every week to call prospects who share those same characteristics? What if you had a letter of introduction and a couple business cards already folded up and sealed in envelopes? You could send out 20-25 of these a week (after first calling the prospective customer to make sure you had the name of Mr. or Mrs. Decision-Maker.) Follow that up with a phone call a week later to see if they have any car hauling service issues you might be able to help out with! If you ain't hauling a car, try dialing a phone! For more bare-knuckle marketing tips for car haulers, visit Orange Fractal.com and read some of the articles.