Kickstart 2025: Craft your stop-start-continue plan for enhanced efficiency and success

Roeth: A new year, new beginnings

Jan. 8, 2025

We can enter 2025 regretting the things we didn't do, or we can reflect on our achievements and plan for what we want to accomplish in the next 12 months.

Michael Roeth

As we begin the New Year, it seems fitting to look at it as an opportunity to start fresh. Some of us—me included—will be dealing with big changes going into 2025. For others, it might be more business as usual. Either way, the New Year is a good time to make changes.

I’m sure all of us had things we wanted to accomplish in 2024 that for one reason or another—lack of time, money, resources, energy, or interest—just did not get done.

Whether we’ve had a major life change or not, we can enter 2025 filled with regrets over the things we didn't do, or we can take a moment to reflect on our achievements and set plans for what we want to accomplish in the next 12 months.

I am not talking about making New Year’s resolutions, but I am suggesting that you put together a to-do list of actions you can take to improve some aspect of your business or personal life. Of course, given NACFE’s mission, I hope your plan includes improving freight efficiency.

This task may not be as daunting as it seems at first. I am a big fan of the idea of a start-stop-continue model. One way to approach the New Year might be to stop doing things that are unproductive, inefficient, ineffective, or that you just don’t see any value in.

In addition to stopping an action or activity, think about starting something new. This could be something you meant to get done in 2024 or something you’ve been interested in but just haven’t found time to do.

But the real power in the stop-start-continue model is the continue part. There are a lot of things that people in the trucking industry are doing that are good and that are improving efficiency. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for starting those efforts and then determine what resources you need to continue doing them in the New Year.

I can see a to-do list with three distinct parts—stop, start, continue—with each part having one, two or three items in it. Be creative here. As I said earlier, I sure would like it if these all related to improving efficiency, but I’ll leave that to you to decide. I just hope that the stop list does not include “stop reading Mike Roeth’s blogs.”

About the Author

Michael Roeth | Executive Director

Michael Roeth is the executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. He serves on the second National Academy of Sciences Committee on Technologies and Approaches for Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium and Heavy-Duty Vehicles and has held various positions with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.