Shed haulers keep asking the same question at truck stops, display lots, and industry gatherings: is the shed-hauling business slowing down, and what happens in the next few years? The honest answer depends on who you ask, where they operate, and which builders they work with. One hauler can be running out of trailers while another struggles to book a load for the week. Shed Business Journal asked haulers across the country how their volumes look, and their answers describe an industry settling back toward normal after an unusual boom. Whatever the local conditions, the same financial habits that protect your contracting business from financial failure apply just as directly to hauling.
What the Numbers Say About the Slowdown
Paul Stalnaker of Stalnaker Transport in Benson, North Carolina, has tracked his volumes through the whole cycle. “We haven’t experienced any slowdown in our area,” he says. “Sure, it’s not as crazy busy as it was back in the 2020-2021 timeframe. But I believe anyone who based their business growth on that time was fooling themselves.” His records show the shape of the market: a 15 percent decrease in units hauled from 2020 to 2021, another 12 percent decline in 2022, a full recovery of that 12 percent in 2023, and a projected 10 to 15 percent increase for 2024. Read that way, the pattern looks less like a collapse and more like a return to the sales pace of 2019 and earlier.
| Period | Change in units hauled | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 to 2021 | -15% | End of the pandemic spike |
| 2021 to 2022 | -12% | Further normalization |
| 2022 to 2023 | +12% | Recovery to pre-2020 pace |
| 2023 to 2024 (projected) | +10% to +15% | Steady, methodical growth |
Jason Kauffman of Kauffman Builders in Eureka, Montana, reads the same signals after 34 years in the industry. “We are definitely slower this year than the other post-COVID years. Although, in my opinion, it’s simply back to normal; 2015-2019 were similar to this year for me.” He cautions against blaming the usual suspects: “I hear lots of people talk about this being an election year, and I’ve come to see that it has ups and downs, and the typical suspects blamed are seldom accurate.” Rates, politics, and news cycles get the blame, but the underlying demand for sheds tracks housing turnover, disposable income, and how long people plan to stay on their property.
Reading the Numbers Correctly
The trap is comparing current volume to 2021, when stimulus payments and record-low mortgage rates pulled shed purchases forward. Measured against that peak, nearly every market looks weak. Measured against the pre-2020 baseline, volumes in many regions are stable or growing. A hauling business growing 10 to 15 percent per year is healthy; it simply feels slow next to a boom that was never going to last.
What a Normal Year Looks Like
For Stalnaker, normal means pre-2020 sales levels with slower, steadier growth, and sales teams working for orders instead of fielding an easy flow of customers. For Kauffman, normal means the rhythms of 2015 through 2019, when the industry was healthy without making headlines. Budgeting around that baseline, rather than around the boom years, is the first step to surviving a slowdown that may be mostly a matter of perspective. When volume cools, demand generation becomes the main growth lever, and a detailed analysis of marketing strategies for construction businesses shows where that effort pays off.
Why Some Haulers Stay Busy While Others Slow Down
Mervin Vargas of United Shed Transport in Covington, Texas, reports the opposite of a slowdown. “We have not experienced any slowdown. If anything, it’s the opposite for us. It may be because we haul for a lot of different manufacturers, but I’ve heard of guys that have been very slow.” His experience points to the most reliable stabilizer in the business: diversification. A hauler tied to one builder inherits that builder’s sales cycles, pricing problems, and seasonal gaps. A hauler serving five manufacturers spreads the risk across five pipelines.
The Diversification Effect
Working with multiple manufacturers changes more than the load count. It smooths seasonality, because builders stagger their busy periods. It creates referral paths when one builder cannot meet a customer’s timeline. It gives the hauler room to negotiate rates, because no single account is irreplaceable. Vargas says haulers who want to stay busy “are going to have to really work together with manufacturers,” which means going the extra mile, spending more time at display lots, helping with lead times, and adopting what he calls a team-player mentality.
Regional Differences Matter
Texas, North Carolina, and Montana are three different markets. Vargas sees strong demand in Texas because his builders sell into a fast-growing region. Stalnaker sees steady pre-2020 pace in the Southeast. Kauffman describes the Mountain West as ordinary. A hauler who reads national headlines will misjudge their own market; the useful comparison is against their own region and their own customer base. The same logic that makes whole-business sustainability from products to people to business practices a working framework for builders applies to haulers: the trailer is the product, the driver is the people, and dispatch and billing are the practices that hold it together.
Financial Preparation for Slow Years
Slowdowns expose businesses that ran hot. When volume drops, the first casualties are haulers with thin margins, heavy debt, and no cash buffer. The numbers that reveal trouble early are the same financial ratios used in a construction business: liquidity, leverage, margin, and how fast customers pay.
Five Ratios That Flag Trouble Early
- Current ratio: current assets divided by current liabilities. Below 1.0, the operation cannot cover its near-term bills without selling equipment.
- Debt-to-equity: total debt divided by owner equity. High leverage turns a slow month into a crisis.
- Gross margin per load: revenue minus direct hauling costs. This is the cushion that absorbs empty miles and downtime.
- Operating margin: what remains after insurance, dispatch, and overhead. This is the money that funds growth.
- Days sales outstanding: how long builders take to pay invoices. Slow payers are a hidden tax on cash flow.
Cash Reserves and Equipment Cycles
Truck payments do not pause when loads thin out. A prudent reserve covers three to six months of fixed costs, including insurance premiums, trailer payments, and the owner’s draw. In flat years, haulers defer equipment purchases: a used trailer with solid tires beats a new one with a note when volumes are uncertain. When the cycle turns, operators with clean balance sheets can buy equipment cheap from businesses that overextended during the boom.
Marketing and Sales When Demand Cools
Stalnaker’s forecast for the industry is blunt: “It will make the sales guys actually have to work for those sales, more so than the easy flow of customers they had three or four years ago.” In a market that requires effort, the haulers who win are the ones who market themselves deliberately. The marketing strategies that promote a construction business transfer to hauling with almost no changes: referrals, a visible online presence, local partnerships, and disciplined follow-up.
Where Slow Markets Reward Effort
- Display lots: schedule time at builder lots so customers and sales staff recognize your rig and know your service area.
- Referral networks: builders trade haulers the way contractors trade subcontractors; a reputation for careful, on-time delivery compounds.
- Digital presence: a simple website with your service area, equipment photos, and insurance details answers the first questions customers ask.
- Same-day follow-up: in a slow market, the hauler who returns calls the same day gets the load.
Setting Expectations With Builders
Slow markets strain hauler-builder relationships because everyone is chasing fewer dollars. Vargas warns against the “driver-against-manufacturer” friction that makes both parties worse off, with each side telling the other where they are failing. The constructive alternative is asking, “How can we serve you better?” and answering with concrete commitments: reliable pickup windows, help with lead times, and clean, presentable equipment on the lot.
Building a Plan for the Next Cycle
The haulers who treat a slowdown as a planning window rather than a disaster position themselves for the next upturn. Strategic decisions about capacity, facilities, and real estate belong in the business plan instead of being made under pressure. For builders and haulers alike, tying land acquisition to the business plan keeps growth decisions anchored to real cash flow rather than optimism.
Capacity Decisions in Flat Markets
Buying capacity at the bottom of a cycle is cheaper, but only for operators who can carry the payments through the trough. The alternatives: lease trailers short-term during peaks, run one truck in two shifts, or hire owner-operators before buying iron. Each option trades cost for flexibility, and flexibility is the asset that matters when nobody can predict the next year.
Signals That the Cycle Is Turning
Useful leading indicators for hauling include builder backlogs, permit activity for accessory structures, raw material orders at steel and lumber suppliers, and the number of display units sitting on lots. When lots empty out and builders quote longer lead times, hauling volume follows within weeks. Watching these signals monthly beats reacting to headlines, and it tells you when to add the trailer you held off buying.
Staying Profitable When Volumes Plateau
Flat volume does not have to mean flat profit. The operators who hold margins in slow markets control what they can: route efficiency, fuel costs, maintenance timing, and billing discipline. Avoiding the financial management pitfalls that sink construction businesses, from late invoicing to mixing personal and business accounts, matters even more when every load counts.
Cost Controls That Move the Bottom Line
- Route planning: batch deliveries by region to cut empty miles between drops.
- Fuel: negotiate a fleet card and track miles per gallon for each truck.
- Maintenance: scheduled service beats breakdown towing, especially when there are no revenue days to spare.
- Billing: invoice on delivery day; builders pay slowest when they are billed late.
Benchmarks Worth Tracking
Three numbers tell a hauler whether the business is healthy: cost per mile, revenue per loaded mile, and utilization, the share of miles driven with a structure aboard. Tracking them monthly in a spreadsheet turns a vague feeling of slow into a diagnosable number. When utilization drops two months in a row, call the builders on your list, walk their display lots, and ask how you can help.