If you have hyphens in your domain name it is easier for a human to read and recognise the keywords in a domain.So when choosing your domain name and deciding on whether to use hyphens you need to consider how the domain name is going to be interpreted and used by other people, not machines.

A hyphen is fine for search engines and actually look clearer at first glance anyway, for what thats worth. In an ideal world you'd have both of course.

Th main downside is that you will always lose traffic to the non-hyphen version, which could be bad if you get big and they compete in the same niche.

Its the same problem with any other TLD but sometimes a country code can be better as locally, people will likely type it in anyway.

Overall, I would personallly keep looking for a good alternative .com domain name without a hyphen.

Th main downside is that you will always lose traffic to the non-hyphen version

Why??

I think the hyphenated domain names will become more familiar to people and more popular with time. They are easier to read and if you want to paint your
www.richardstruckingcompany.com on the side of your truck and drive past people at 75 mph then you may not do as well as if you had
www.richards-trucking-company.com on the side of your truck.

Just make sure that you incorporate the hyphen into your logo with the name. It will make people remember it much better.

Avoid domains with dashes they are hard to remember. Use a thesaurus to find alternative terms and stick to .com as well unless you are a non profit in which case you should use .org.

1) for the name, the shorter, the better
2) you'd better choose .com if you haven't have one.