Trucking Competitive Analysis
Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.
Direct competitors are other trucking businesses.
Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from you that aren’t direct competitors. This includes hauling products/freight themselves or in other segments within the trucking industry.
With regards to direct competition, you want to detail the other trucking businesses with which you compete. For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:
- What types of customers do they serve?
- What services do they offer?
- What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
- What are they good at?
- What are their weaknesses?
With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. Be sure to access online reviews of your competitors to help answer these questions.
The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:
- Will you provide superior trucking services?
- Will you provide trucking services that your competitors don’t offer?
- Will you make it easier or faster for customers to acquire your services?
- Will you provide better customer service?
- Will you offer better pricing?
Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.
