In the past, I have discussed the trucking industry's resilience, so I will not go into detail again here, but I would like us to keep in mind that resilience as we navigate the remainder of this year.
Things are a little unclear now, especially because of tariffs, counter-tariffs, new regulations, and the rolling back of existing regulations. It can be difficult to keep up with everything that’s going on, but we need to stay informed and focused on doing what we are best at—meeting the needs of our customers.
It will be important to ensure that we don’t abandon the things that have made us successful in the past. Over the years, we have all learned what our customers expect from us and how to deliver on those expectations. No matter what changes occur around us, we just need to keep doing that consistently.
Since each fleet is different, it sets its own key performance indicators to track and monitor. Regardless of whatever happens in the economy or the regulatory environment, fleets need to continue to strive to score well against their key performance indicators (KPIs) because those KPIs are what make the fleet successful. KPIs can cover a wide range of areas, from the percentage of on-time deliveries to dwell times for service appointments to number of accidents to driver turnover. KPIs can be used to measure the things a particular fleet wants to improve on or make sure it excels at.
See also: Despite the noise, well-positioned carriers should be optimistic about freight in 2025
I am not saying that KPIs never need to be reviewed because of course they do as they reflect our businesses, which are not static. But for most of us, KPIs reflect our core values, and those core values should not change based on who is in office, the state of the economy, or because of some new regulation.
Your core values reflect your fleet’s vision, mission, and principles. Think of them as the guiding philosophy for your business. Core values should rarely change, but KPIs can change since they serve to measure progress toward a goal. Once a goal is achieved, the fleet may want to move on to making improvements in other areas while still maintaining mastery over the original goal. Or it may strive to elevate the target on original goals to achieve, even higher levels of service.
The bottom line is that fleet managers need to stick to the basics in these changing times, since those things will likely make a fleet successful no matter what.
