Trucking: Buy first or find business first??, financial bind, recycling plant

Question
Hi, My fiance & I recently got "handed down" a small trucking company-we have 2 tractors (my fiance & one other great driver). We have an "account" with a large steel recycling plant locally. The problem we have is being "shut down" sometimes up to one week at a time which puts us in a real financial bind. This is our only account-question is: Should we invest in more trucks first and try to diversify?, or find the business first? We also want to lease drivers on-I read where you had a lease agreement we could purchase...any other rules for leasing on drivers?? I too have a hard time finding loads direct from the shippers...any help would be appreciated!!

Answer
Megan, in today's slow economy I would definitely recommend finding the business first.  You have one of the most difficult challenges faced by small business getting started.  Adding 1 truck to a two truck fleet increases your capacity by 50% but it also increases your costs by a similar percentage.  Unless you have the business to keep the truck busy producing revenue don't take on the expense.  The first challenge is to get your current two trucks to full utilization and you will definitely need more than one customer to get there.  There are no shortcuts, just plain hard work selling and marketing.  Do as much research as you can on the phone and internet to find companies in similar business to your current customer.  They will need the same type of equipment and service and you can sell them on your experience.  With two or three customers in the same or complementary business you will find that when one is slow chances are another one will be busy.  When you get more work than you can handle then it's time to either raise prices or get another truck.  Contracting with Owner-Operators is a good low risk way to expand capacity but you won't keep them unless you can provide the steady flow of work that they need to survive.
Here are a couple of good sources for some general business knowledge and advise:
http://www.score.org/index.html
http://www.sba.gov/
Best of luck.  Jim