Van Line Ownership Models

When people approach the van line industry for Transportation needs, many do not understand the lingo, history, and dynamics that can truly play a role in your business dealings. One very often forgotten Key is the ownership of a Van Line. There are really only a few different types of Van line Owner Ship. Agent Owned, Independently Owned, and Publicly Owned. Each type of ownership has its own benefits and setbacks.

Agent Owned
Agent owned van lines are where the local agents of the van line own and administrate the interstate business. These van lines still have a corporate office that is a Van Line HQ, but the HQ is run by a board that consists of Agents of that Van Line. This creates a different type of strategy that focuses more attention on the agents. This means that the individual agents are more profitable, and receive a higher level of attention from the HQ office. Pricing is also different. Because the agents decide on pricing, and the agents also haul the shipments, pricing is usually a bit higher than Public Owned Van Lines. Agent owned van lines tend to have the profitability of everyone in mind, not just the HQ or Hauler. This means better service, more attention and a higher level of Quality but of course you sacrifice in the pricing area.

Independently Owned
These types of Van Lines have mostly disappeared. These are van lines where the HQ office and Hauling is the same company that also owns the local service agents. For the most part there are no longer Independently Owned Van Lines.

Publicly Owned
Public Van Lines are also rare, but becoming more of an occurrence. These van lines have a much different structure that focuses on logistics and high volume sacrificing a big of the quality to save on pricing. In this model the local agents are simply agents or members of a larger van line. The Van Line is comprised of the Haulers, and Corporate Office or HQ. The payments and pricing is dictated by the HQ office and the agents are free to join or leave. If they stay they agree to accept the payments and handle the volumes that the HQ office sends. The set back to this model is that the HQ office often gives too much attention to gathering business, and less to the agents running the business. This means that Agents often do not make enough money because the HQ office has created pricing that only covers marginal amounts for agents but higher levels for the Main HQ company. Because the main HQ company is a publicly traded company the shareholders also have a high level of expectation for profit and return, again forcing the agents who are performing the work to take a back seat in the profit ring. This means that the agents often perform poorly and hesitate to perform at all if the profit is not assured. On the other hand this model also pushes much more attention to the pricing end opening lower costs for the lowered quality.

Overall no matter what type of company you choose, you should take into consideration what you are looking to have moved. If High Value is the key consider the higher value carriers. If low value and damage is more acceptable consider a lower value carrier.