Currently, 80.7% of the freight transport companies registered with the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT) belong to the truck driver (from one to five units), this type of entrepreneur accumulates 22.9% of the fleet, according to figures to 2023 from the Basic Statistics of Federal Motor Transport.
Small companies represent 16.4%, medium-sized companies 2.2% and large companies 0.7% of the total number of companies. However, the latter own 30.8% of the total national fleet, which totaled 1,331,921 units at the end of last year.
Due to their nature and creation processes, the vast majority of freight transportation companies are family organizations run by a single person who operates the entire company, either on an empirical basis or through an academic preparation process.
Under the shelter and strict supervision of their founder, many of these companies have achieved financial success and prestige with their clients . Taking this into account, it is “normal” that trucking companies continue to operate as they have done until now, as organizations with a family structure.
Strictly speaking, and if we stick to the results, changing from a family-owned transportation company to one with corporate governance can be considered almost unnecessary.
However, transportation has faced profound changes in recent years. Einar Palomino, CEO of VI Human and President of Drive is Great, commented that this evolution has been stimulated by the ability of companies to establish financial guidelines that help them guarantee healthy finances, and subsequently, guidelines for continuity in terms of their capacity for growth based on controlled leverage.
Palomino explained that the second factor that today forces us to open the window of change is the training of new and good operators . “Transportation per se becomes a financial and people business. Whoever has the ability to have a financial vision, accompanied by the ability to have the right people behind the wheel, has guaranteed continuity,” he said.
Although applying the good practices of an institutionalized company may seem far away for companies under the truck-man scheme, it may not be so far away for small companies that at some point in their history have begun to distinguish the implementation of new structures , the acquisition of digitalization and technology tools.
“These types of companies are the ones that are beginning to be candidates for establishing a different way of working and it is precisely at this point that the transformation of family transport companies into companies under corporate governance can take place. Although strictly speaking there is no defined size of company or fleet for an institutionalization model to be incorporated,” says the general director of VI Human and president of Drive is Great.
