Duston Webb
Corvallis, MT (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal
Diversified Freight
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Startup
Location:
Hamilton
Industry:
Transportation
Year Founded:
2006
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Business Stage:
Growth (profitable)
Entity Type:
"S" Corporation
Description:
INTRODUCTION
We are a Freight Brokerage Firm that provides 3rd party logistics services to companies Worldwide. We facilitate both Trucking throughout North America and ocean shipments worldwide.
HISTORY
The company started out as a 1 person operation in which the owner worked as an independent contractor/freight broker for another firm in 2005/2006. In 2009 the owner went 100% independent starting with only $5000. In 2010 we started expanding, and here are the revenues for each year:
2009: $334,264.64
2010: $652,024.55
2011: $1,336,954.11
2012: $2,600,440.37
2013: $2,865,484.04
2014: $4,012,686.85 thru Dec.1st, 2014
REASON FOR INVESTMENT NEEDS
The company has grown to produce $4 million year annually since May of 2009 to current year 2014. Our biggest issue at this time is adding broker/agents to our firm locally in our market. This is due to lack people with sales experience in general. The company has 8 brokers, a bookkeeper, and office assistant. Our debt is right about $250k over a 5 year period. We are looking to grow to 15 agents over the next 12 months.
CURRENT ASSETS
Website- (URL removed) which we been building since 2010/2011, generates a large part of our business. Currently has over 300 pages and will grow to over 1000 pages in the next 3 months, including our additions for marketing to ocean shipping industry. We now spend about $35k to $40k per year for advertising. Our Facebook page that promotes and markets our website as well, has over 60,000 likes. This can be seen at (URL removed) , and gives us great credibility. We also own domain names such as (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed), and more.
We built our own customer management system, which manages 23000+ customers that our agent’s cold called, or that were generated by our website. This system allows us to manage customers, rate them as a prospect, track all quotes by all brokers, reports of broker production in all aspects, and improves communication especially with brokers/agents that are not located at the corporate office, which will be vital for nationwide recruiting.
INVESTMENT USES
In our current industry, most trucking companies that do business with brokerage firms such as ours, now factor their loads. Factoring loads means they sell their Account Receivables to independent financial firms that then turn around and bill and collect monies from us 30 days later. My goal as owner with improved cash flow will be to pay all factored freight bills in 15 days, along with non-factored loads in 25 days, maximizing our credibility in the industry. Many trucking companies will not work with a company that has a rating over 30 days to pay. Increase cash flow would also allow us to spend more on long term marketing results versus short term results.
IN CLOSING
In just 5 years, this company that was started with $5000 and has grown to $4 million+ a year in revenues. In many cases, year over year growth was 90% to 100%. We need to recruit experience agents/sales people. We need to give more credit accounts to larger credit worthy customers, and still pay our freight bills not just on time, but early, maximizing our creditability. Our customer management system provides great effectiveness in production, time management, and customer prospecting. It is user friendly, simplifying training for nationwide recruiting. Our website has several major keywords ranked in major search engines. 25+ keywords ranked in the top 3 of google, 60 keywords in the top 10, and over 80 keywords in the top 20. Additions to the site over the next few months will triple those numbers in the next 6 months. We are set to grow very successful with the right investor. If you are interested in learning more about our company please contact us.