Freight brokerages have a tendency to generally be very cash flow rigorous businesses – where the owner is walking on a tightrope attempting to balance slow shipper payments and quick payment demands from . This creates a dilemma because they need to pay their drivers quickly, but they don’t to angry shippers by requesting quick pays.
Their first line of protection is to use their on reserves to pay drivers, while waiting to get paid by shippers. Unfortunately, paying drivers out of cash reserves will restrict your growth and, if done too much, it can create issues for your business.
A much better alternative is to use company financing to take care of this gap. There is one particular type of financing that addresses this specific problem – it’s called freight bill factoring.
Freight bill factoring offers the equivalent of a quick pay, which improves your cash flow and offers the needed funds to pay your drivers and grow your business. It works by having a factoring company act as a financial intermediary in the transaction.
You sell the fright bill to the factoring company who pays you for it immediately. The transaction is then settled once your shipper pays the bill in full. The factoring company charges a small fee for this service – usually a percentage of the freight bill.
One of the advantages of freight factoring is that is easier to obtain than most conventional financing. The most important qualification requirement is the credit quality of your shippers. Aside from that, your company needs to be free of liens, judgment’s and tax problems.
Freight factoring can be an ideal tool for brokers who are growing quickly and whose biggest assets is a roster of reliable and credit worthy shippers.
