Mindre åkeriföretags konkurrensstrategier

The amount of cargo has since the 1970s increased in Sweden and the road traffic accounts for a large part of the transported volume. In Stockholm County the amount of cargo is calculated to be doubled in size from year 2001 to 2020 which means a greater need for transport is required. Much of these transports are being carried out by haulage companies of varying sizes which acts externally as carriers for their customers. All of this despite a greater awareness, laws and demands regarding environmental performance. The trend shows that the haulage industry in Sweden are moving towards fewer but larger haulage companies, which means that the competition is getting tougher for the smaller haulage companies. Smaller haulage companies and research about their competitive strategies is a neglected part of this industry. The purpose if this paper is therefore to investigate and analyze small haulage companies’ competitive strategies. We want to find out what competitive strategies small haulage companies use in order to be competitive in the haulage industry. The study demarcates to the Stockholm and Uppsala regions together with the haulage companies which this paper defines as minor, those with 1-15 trucks or cars in their fleet. Data has been gathered through a web based survey that was mailed out to the respondents after phone contact was made with them. A total of 185 companies were contacted from a list we made ourselves with help from the yellow pages online. After losses due to different reasons 40 respondents remained which have been the basis to the results of this paper. The conclusion of this research is that the smaller haulage companies who participated in our survey sees the haulage industry in Stockholm and Uppsala county as a matured industry as they believe that the greatest threat to their business are competing firms of various kinds. The respondents believe that their competitors use different pricing strategies and counter this by differentiate themselves with a strategy consisting of god service and quality. This also provides added value for their customers since they win competitive advantages through the smaller haulage company’s strategic work