Start Your Own Transportation Service. Cheryl Kimball

And you will need to train that employee for packing, moving procedures, customer interactions, how to behave appropriately in a client’s home, etc., so that your professional reputation isn’t damaged.

Specialty Transport

      Specializing in a specific kind of unusual transportation—extremely large items such as airplane parts, or modular houses, or refrigerated perishables, blood, or human organs for transplant—can provide a healthy income. You will likely have fewer clients but can charge higher fees for the expertise you have or gain from specializing. Depending on where you are located (for example, a medical transport business in downtown Boston where there are numerous large medical facilities opposed to a small town in southern Indiana) will dictate whether you can do this business yourself or you need employees.

      stat fact

      If you are starting a trucking business, be sure to understand IRS Form 2290, “Heavy Highway Vehicle Use,” which covers the tax regulations related to heavy use of U.S. roads.

      Livestock Transportation

      The horse industry is alive and well across the United States, and livestock hauling of cattle is a viable transport service in the Midwest and western parts of the country. Although you don’t need any specific licenses for transporting personal horses for customers unless you get into commercial-size vehicles that hold many animals, you will definitely need equine or bovine experience for potential clients to trust your ability to transport their animals, and you need to familiarize yourself with the livestock transport regulations for crossing state lines.

      Although the livestock owner, not you, will be responsible for having their animal ready for transport to its final destination, you will want to know the livestock regulations of any state you will be entering. Most states have at least minimum requirements of certain infectious tests (including a health exam) and/or vaccinations for entering their state. Do not leave it up to horse or cattle owners to know these regulations; while they may be the one lining up and paying the veterinarian who will do these tests, you will want to be knowledgeable to advise them. It is to your benefit to make sure they have the proper paperwork for you to carry on the transport and show at the final destination or anywhere along the way that is necessary. All of this will help make your trip with their animal go smoothly.

      To make sure the trip goes smoothly for the animal, you need to be knowledgeable about livestock. Or you need to hire someone to do the actual transport who is knowledgeable. It requires patience and knowledge if a horse or cow refuses to get in a trailer. Keep in mind that if you are transporting any distance and need to overnight, you will need to get the animal on and off the trailer several times. And not only do you need to know how to deal with things on the road—tricks to get the horse to drink while traveling and help avoid colic, how to treat or bandage a wound if necessary—you also need to know the basics behind driving carefully while towing a live animal. Getting a veterinary technician license or bringing a certified vet tech with you might be useful and give you an edge for getting customers and word-of-mouth praise.

      Boats

      Transporting boats is another specialty business that can be lucrative and interesting if you are in a maritime area. Keep in mind that this will be a seasonal business—and extremely busy during the pre- and post-boating season since everyone will want their boat in the water or taken out of the water in the same general timeframe.

      You will need to decide what kind of boats you want to transport. A speedboat for the lake has a very different trailer requirement than a large sailboat with a mast and a keel. Most marinas have their own boat-moving operation to get boats off the moorings and slips owned by the marina and into their boatyard. But if the boat is going to be moved to someone’s backyard for the off season or otherwise being moved somewhere that sailing it there is not possible to do, it will need over-the-ground transport by someone like you. You can equip your rig to unstep the mast before transport, or, if the boat is at a marina, the boat owner could have the marina remove the mast; one way or another this is a necessity since you will not be able to transport a sailboat with a stepped mast in almost any town in the country, given utility wires.

      Although motorboat transport would likely be a higher-volume business, it is also something many boat owners can do themselves. But if you keep your prices reasonable and become known for taking extra good care of the boats you transport, you may find people hiring you to take care of this for them anyway. Motorboat owners are more likely to have room in their yard to store them than those with large sailboats, especially ones with keels. However, covered storage is appealing, so if you can provide this you can have an added-value component to your business. Boat storage garages can have multiple stories, but you need a specific piece of equipment to lift them up and move them into position on the upper layers. You can also add the service of shrink-wrapping the boat before storage.

      The startup funding for boat transport is modest but perhaps surprisingly higher than you might think, especially given the cost of pickup trucks. You will need an appropriately sized truck and perhaps two or three different-sized trailers. Also important is liability insurance to cover the boats you transport and the possibilities of things that can happen when you haul things. That storage option is a good expansion aspect to the boat hauling business.

Air Transport

      Transport by air, whether plane or helicopter, involves significant startup costs for equipment, licensing (for yourself and/or employees), and insurance. But if you really want to specialize, this is one way to do it. Small plane transport can be of goods or people like hunters or skiers headed to remote territory, delivering goods or mail to islands, or even transporting freight internationally. According to the World Bank website (www.worldbank.org), “The demand for air freight is limited by cost, typically priced 4 to 5 times that of road transport and 12 to 16 times that of sea transport. . . . Commodities shipped by air thus have high values per unit or are very time-sensitive, such as documents, pharmaceuticals, fashion garments, production samples, electronic consumer goods, and perishable agricultural and seafood products.”

      You would need to get your ducks in a row using a facility that has excellent cargo handling and inspection equipment (especially for agricultural products and other items highly regulated when they move around the country) and customs if you plan to do any international shipping since moving products by air is all about speed. You don’t want to offer flight shipment only to lose time on the ground on either end.

      fun fact

      The taxi service has traditionally been very highly regulated with transferrable permits, called “medallions,” in large markets valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The changing cab market, instigated by ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, have devalued those permits and are starting to change the way taxi regulation is handled.

      Air transport is definitely a possible transportation business, but you will need to give yourself lots of lead time to do research and set up the links you need to offer a smooth service.

Marine Shipping

      Transport by boat (the original source of the word “shipping”) is a huge business. This is also a huge business to start. Marine shipping is often by tankers stacked with containers that get lifted off the trailer of an 18-wheeler and stacked on the boat, typically entails international import/export business, and requires