Fuel, driver pay, equipment notes and lender covenants, all moving at once.
Accounting, controller and fractional CFO work for transportation and logistics, from a team that has closed these books before.
What we usually see when a carrier goes from $5M to $20M
Revenue per truck goes up while cash per truck goes down, because growth means new equipment on new notes before the lanes that pay for them are full. Receivables stretch as shippers get bigger. Fuel moves faster than rates. The bank's covenants were set in a different fuel environment. Nobody knows which lanes or customers actually make money after driver pay and deadhead.
The numbers we watch
— Revenue and margin per truck and per lane
— Cost per mile against rate per mile
— Days sales outstanding by shipper
— Factoring cost, if used
— Equipment debt service against the 13 weeks
— Driver pay ratio
— Deadhead percentage
— DSCR and leverage the way the lender calculates them
What we build
— Per-truck and per-lane profitability in the monthly package
— A 13-week forecast with equipment notes and fuel on their real cycle
— Receivables discipline by shipper
— Lender packages and covenant tracking
— A scorecard the owner reads Monday
How the numbers connect
What the owner sees on Monday.
Everything to the right explains it.
Adds to cash
Collections
DSO by shipper
Margin per lane
Rate per mile − cost per mile − driver pay
Takes from cash
Debt service
Equipment notes
Fuel timing
Weekly card settlement vs. rate cycle
The tree shows how cash is built for this industry: what adds to it, what takes from it, and the measures behind each. It is the structure of the scorecard we build.
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