business financial help ideas!

Hey everyone, I own a flat trucking company (about 15 trucks) and we are running into some serious financial issues.  I know there are a lot of smart people on here so thought id see if someone has some ideas!

So basically here is a bit of the company history,

I purchased the company from my wifes father about 8 years and it has always been profitable for the most part.  Until the 2008 crash came with rising fuel prices, competitor's cutting freight rates and a general slow down in all freight, we struggled to make it through.  Now things have been going fairly well but the amount of back date we created in that period is killing us and our accountant figures if everything stays the same it will be 5 years before it is all paid off again.

Anyway so on top of that our friendly bank is constantly trying to raise the interest rate (currently 6.5% on a 190,000$ loan) and they want it all paid off before the next 3 years.  They will not give us more of an operating loan which is only 25K (embarrassing for a 2.5 million dollar company.)  Over the past year and a half our company has made a net income of anywhere for 5k to 30k per month.  I have cut all the unneccesary costs I can and we have now turned to factoring to keep us alive.  As you can likely guess our costs for factoring and the high interest on back debt and loans is a major issue (last month was 22k and our net income was still 8k).  We have hired an outside company that has had a very high success rate with restructing company's and allowing them to achieve additonal financing, but they are not figuring this will be done for another 4-5 months.  We are looking for 400-500k to buy out the back debt and allow us to remove the factoring company.  Honestly even with a 10% interest rate on a  5 year lone we would cut out interest expenses half!

So basically I more just venting my frustration but also looking to see if anyone has some ideas for some short term ways to free up some cash as business is a little slow right now and the money dries up fast!

Thanks

For the most part all of our equipment is in use or will be in a week or two when business picks up again, we tend to get a one or 2 week slow period every once and a while which really hurts with no operating loan.  Thanks for the suggestion though!

hey bob,

2008-2009 was a deadly year for the trucking industry we accumulated a huge amount of back debt during this period.  So now we have alot of interest payments on this back debt and for the most part we are fine but when business slows we run into trouble.  With only a 25k operating and fuel costs of 20k a week, that 25k could be gone in a day.  We are profitable since then but I guess were just cash strapped.  And yes competition is fine and expected but as soon as the industry slows you have people that will start to haul freight just to turn cash even though they will be losing money (only lasts for so long before they go bankrupt).  This is what hurts the fuel surcharge.  Sorry if I'm still not clear about everything, its pretty tough to explain it all on the internet.

Thanks!