All references
It all runs through the owner
Trucking
IllustrativeComposite scenario. Not an actual client.Where it started
- Dispatch calls to owner
- All hours, every day
- Cost per mile by lane
- Not tracked
- Maintenance
- Reactive
- Exit optionality
- None
Where it landed
- Dispatch calls to owner
- Rarely, and by choice
- Cost per mile by lane
- Measured and priced
- Maintenance
- Scheduled
- Exit optionality
- Ray decides the timing
Regional trucking company · thirty-one trucks
I have not had an uninterrupted dinner in nine years.
Ray takes dispatch calls at all hours because the drivers call him directly and always have. He knows the business is worth something. He does not know what, and he has started thinking about the end.
What the North Star surfaced
- 1Dispatch depends entirely on the owner. No system, no rotation, no second point of contact. The phone is the business.
- 2Cost per mile is not tracked by lane. Some routes are almost certainly losing money and being covered by the profitable ones.
- 3Maintenance is reactive. Unplanned downtime is absorbed as a cost of doing business rather than measured and reduced.
- 01 · Destination
The number they were building toward
Established fleet value and the target Ray would need to reach for retirement to work on his terms, with a timeline attached.
- 02 · Roadmap
What had to change, in order
Built the dispatch function as a role rather than a person, set lane profitability rules, and moved maintenance from reactive to scheduled.
- 03 · Rocketship
The systems the team now runs
Implemented dispatch and fleet management with cost per mile by lane, a maintenance schedule, and reporting Ray reviews weekly instead of hourly.