5 Steps to Start My Trucking Business
October 13, 2025
When starting my trucking and transport business, there were some major decisions to be made on what truck and equipment was needed for lifting and delivering heavy cargo. Requirements of my own business helped to guide the final decisions, and challenges from past experience influenced the decision I ultimately made.
My immediate need was the ability to lift items up to 1 ton, transport them to diverse locations (residence, farm, work site), and place them without the aid of onsite machinery.
I ultimately selected a truck-mounted crane with a flatbed to start my trucking and delivery business. But I went through a fair bit of research on other options for lifting and transporting heavy cargo prior to making my own decision. Following are some the truck and equipment options that I considered before making a decision. I hope these are helpful if you’re researching option as well.
The lift gate solves the problem of lifting/lowering heavy freight. However, the bed of the truck needs to be perfectly level. As soon as a 1,000 lb item is lifted with a pallet jack, it’s going to roll on an uneven surface. And it can’t be easily controlled by hand.
Cargo also has to be palletized so that a pallet jack can lift it. Cargo like a cylindrical tote needs to be strapped down to the pallet so that it doesn’t tip over. This is time consuming, costly, and hardly a foolproof way to secure the load.
Once a pallet is lowered to ground level on a lift gate, unless your again on a level and smooth surface, like a cement pad, a pallet jack won’t be able to move or position the cargo further.
I ruled out a box truck platform for a couple reasons. It would limit cargo options for loading and transporting oversized loads. Cargo would need to be palletized in order to move it inside the box, and the truck couldn’t be side loaded with a forklift is available on either end of the delivery.
Perhaps this is the ideal solution, but it didn’t work for me for a couple reasons. While a moffett forklift is great for removing cargo from a flatbed and being able to traverse uneven and off pavement surfaces, it is also heavy. Since a moffett forklift mounts onto the flatbed truck and travels with the cargo, it adds to the GVW (gross vehicle weight) and quickly puts a rig over the 26,000 lbs GVWR (gross vehicle weight rating) threshold.
Since I am not staring out with a CDL (commercial drivers license), which can take a month and $3,500 to get, I need a truck setup that when fully loaded is under 26k lbs, including cargo.
Perhaps one down side of a moffett forklift setup is truck or trailer size, which may limits deliveries to tight locations. Since the forklift is heavy, the respective size requirement to carry it would be a large double axle truck or trailer.
Living here in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, many delivery locations can be up tight winding roads with no turnaround options for a large truck or trailer. Having a shorter wheelbase is sometimes a necessity.
A truck-mounted crane eliminates the need for heavy moving equipment on either end of the delivery, for loading or unloading. Being able to pickup and place cargo without having a forklift, excavator or skid steer onsite opens up delivery windows significantly. The timing of machinery and materials is often a bottleneck for kicking off a project. It’s a waste of money to have machinery sitting around without materials onsite to get started, but materials can’t be delivered without machinery present to offload them.
Enter a crane truck. And not just a truck with a crane, but an articulated knuckle boom crane.
The articulation allows for a greater range of movement to pickup and place heavy items with precision. A telescoping extension boom provides greater reach to retrieve and place cargo farther away from the truck bed. Having the ability to reach over a fence, or underneath a structure to pickup a heavy item can be the difference of requiring more equipment and manpower on a job.
The added benefit of a knuckle boom crane is its ability to fold into a small compact form for travel. Mounted either immediately behind the truck cab or at the end of the flatbed, a knuckle boom crane is compact when folded up, minimizing the profile of the truck for transport. It’s also out of the way and not covering or taking up valuable payload space on the flatbed.
Truck-mounted cranes can also be relatively light. Unlike a moffett forklift, a powerful but compact knuckle boom crane can mounted on a sub 26k GVWR truck and still leave sufficient payload capacity for cargo. This is an ideal setup for launching a delivery business for a driver without a CDL.
My starting setup is an International 4300 with a 16 foot flatbed, and a HIAB knuckle boom crane. The truck has a GVWR under 26k. With truck, bed and crane included, I still have a payload capacity of 14k lbs. This carrying capacity is more than enough for me to get my business started.
Here are some details on the HIAB crane that I’m working with. It can safely lift 5k lbs near the bed of the truck for loading, while still being able to lift around 1,500 lbs when the boom is fully extended to 30 feet.
Stay tuned for updates as I learn about operating our crane truck and building this business. It’ll be an exciting journey that I look forward sharing over time. If you live in the Asheville area, Western North Carolina or adjacent states, please consider Up! Up! Lifting the next time you need crane services to lift or transport heavy cargo.
