Run Your Trucking Company From Home PC Shopping Guide (2022)

        Working from home has become increasingly popular due to the pandemic. With this increase in people working from home, having a solid desktop workstation is a worthy investment. Dispatch Commodity has created a quick parts guide for our friends and family working from home. We know that not everyone is tech savvy enough to build your own PC, so shopping for a new home workstation might be challenging. We also included a prebuilt option for a quick and easy desktop solution if you do not want the extra DIY work. We tried to keep the total budget under $1500.00 which may seem like a lot, but the lists include everything you would need to operate a PC like a mouse, displays, and keyboard, which you may already have. First up we will run through the prebuilt set up and give some pros and cons on this versus our custom build. 

  1. Prebuilt PC Build for Trucking Company Back Office 

  • One of the biggest pros to going with a prebuilt is the most obvious in that you do not have to assemble anything. If you need something fast and are not the most tech savvy, then this would be the way to go without trouble. On the other side of this you also are not getting anything near the performance per dollar you would get from doing a custom build. 

  • You can normally find one that comes bundled with a mouse, keyboard, and OS and if refurbished items do not bother you, prebuilt is an effective way to get a budget friendly workstation up and operating quickly. 

  1. Budget Friendly Prebuilt 

  • First on our list is the budget friendly Dell OptiPlex 7040 . This desktop should have more than enough power to run multiple programs at once and is very affordably price around $330.00. It comes stock with 1 HDMI and 2 DisplayPort connectors allowing you to have three screens running at the same time. It also comes with Windows 10 pro leaving only a keyboard, mouse, and display left to purchase to get your home office running. Altogether using the mouse, keyboard, and double displays from our build-your-own pc parts list brings the total to around $700.00. 

  1. High End Prebuilt 

  • Our next pick from Skytech runs a little higher on price but will be able to handle all your business needs and double as a home PC or even an entry level gaming PC. With the PC and OS alone coming in at around $1300.00 with the added keyboard, mouse and displays this would easily hit the $1500.00 mark. Now while you will not need all the power this machine has to run spreadsheets and web browsers; chances are if you work from home it doubles as your day-to-day PC as well. If that is the case this PC should be good to last five or more years depending on what you do with it besides run your work software. 

  1. Build Your Own Home Office PC 

  • If you are not afraid to try and build your own PC we have put together a parts list here for a PC that ends up being a faster than the high end prebuilt for the same price point. With all the tutorial videos and online resources assembling the PC really is not that hard. And with the added flexibility of picking your own equipment you can make it fit your needs. Now the one in our build is above and beyond what any trucking company would need to run any business software, but it will hold its own for the near future. Our set up gives you the option to have up to four monitors which might seem excessive but depending on your trucking operations you might need to have multiple screens with various programs open at one time. And like we mentioned before if you are running your operations from home, then chances are you will not be using this PC just for spreadsheets and email, so it cannot hurt to have a little extra power. 

  1. Working From Home Is Different for Everyone 

  • To sum it all up the best option for you really depends on what you are needing to get out of the machine. Now more than ever prebuilt PCs are becoming more competitive with the build your own PC builds simply because it is so easy to build your own. If you only need to run spreadsheets and a web browser, then you really do not need all the bells and whistles and our budget build will do everything you need. If you want something that will last a long time and hold its own, then it might be worth taking the time to build your own PC even if it is just to learn more about how it all works. If you want the power and do not care to mess with building your own there are plenty of prebuilt options or even custom prebuilt options available that are similar in price to build your own. 

Read more about dispatching with Dispatch Commodity here!