How this fleet is using old lessons to meet modern challenges
After 40 years in business, Don Christenson knows the trucking landscape inside and out. Today, the Christenson Transportation president and chief executive has a well-informed view of freight haulers’ modern challenges.
“A lack of tort reform is costing the industry,” Christenson said. “There should be a federal law covering U.S. and interstate highways that governs how accident damages are awarded. They should not be based on how much insurance you have or are required to carry, and we should not have to buy additional coverage to protect ourselves against multimillion-dollar claims.
“We all have a responsibility when we drive, and we don’t take that lightly,” Christenson continued. “We have an extremely good safety program, but when an accident happens, the first question that’s usually asked is, ‘How much is it worth?’ The only thing that seems to matter is what we didn’t do or might have done differently.”
Over the years, Christenson has seen his share of freight market ups and downs. “The lessons we learned in 2000 carried us through the freight recession we experienced in 2009,” he said. “This time, however, there’s no predictability. And the financial markets are propping up new and mostly unprofitable competition by lending money and leasing trucks to new carriers who typically don’t have the customer base to sustain them.
“At Christenson, we’ve always been actively trying to grow but only by focusing on stable customer relationships and long-term opportunities, not short-term gains,” Christenson continued. “Over 90% of our hauls are contract freight, and we generally don’t use the spot market. In addition, we won’t sacrifice equipment investments or underpay drivers to get a shipper’s business.”
Christenson regularly invests in its fleet and drivers. “We turned over our entire fleet in 2022, and now we’re operating 2023 through 2025 model year Peterbilt Model 579s,” VP RayVaun Christenson said. “That positioned us to get on a roughly three-year trade cycle and replace about 100 tractors each year.”
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About 90% of the Christenson Transportation fleet is now under lease-purchase plans with drivers, including equipment and full-service maintenance managed in-house but provided by long-term partners. “We’ve been making the transition to lease-purchase agreements because driver productivity is better when they have a stake in their success,” RayVaun Christenson said.
Since 2023, Christenson Transportation has also provided its 300 drivers with the Trucker Path app. “We had a navigation system that was supposed to generate truck-specific routes, but our drivers kept running into restricted roads and low bridges, leading to complaints and the possibility of late deliveries, violations, and even accidents,” Chandler Klein, senior business analyst, explained. “Since adopting the truck-safe navigation features in Trucker Path for Fleets, driver calls about routes have gone away, and the possibility of accidents and violations has dropped significantly.”
The Trucker Path for Fleets truck-safe navigation uses geolocation data from orders in the carrier’s McLeod Software TMS. Through an integration enabled by Trucker Path, the data is used to build routes, and navigation details are transferred to Samsara ELDs, where they are immediately accessible to the driver.
Truck-Safe Navigation from Trucker Path allows fleets to input vehicle dimensions to avoid low overpasses, sharp turns, weight-restricted roads, and more. App users contribute more than 800,000 inputs each month to help keep route information updated and accurate. The routing solution also guides drivers to proper entry points at customer locations, and fleets can enable or restrict access to specific points of interest by using a Custom Map Layer feature.
Headquartered in Strafford, Missouri, family-owned Christenson Transportation provides 48-state service hauling high-value, high-risk and time-sensitive freight. The company also operates a regional fleet in the southeast.
“For almost 40 years,” Don Christenson said, “we’ve been successfully providing quality service at Christenson Transportation by sticking to our principles and doing what we do in the best way possible.”
