I think carriers have to take a hard inward, look at themselves, and decide what business it is that they’re good at. It’s the old core-competency rule – they have to decide what is it that makes sense, what is it that makes money for them, what are they good at, where can they add value, how can they differentiate themselves – carve out a niche for themselves and really focus on it.

There’s an awful lot of technology that’s being used today by large carriers to analyze what parts of the business are good for them: where do they want to run, what do they want to haul, who do they want their customers to be, and I think every carrier in the future is going to have to do that – carve out a niche, specialize, focus on the niche and be the absolute best in terms of what makes sense and adds value to your customer that you possibly can.

Technology, from a comparative perspective, is relatively cheap today. I look back at the mid-90’s when we first started thinking about putting on-board recorders on trucks the only technology available was through the airline industry and it was extremely expensive. Today, on-board recorders aren’t in single-digits but they’re out of the triple-digit costs to the double-digits.

If you look at the satellite tracking technology that’s out there, what’s happened with digital technology and the integration of digital and satellite technology onboard trucks today and what OEMs are going to be providing, certainly the access to technology among all levels of carriers is there today and it’s relatively competitive, so this s a case where big is not necessarily always better or more cost effective.

Technology seems to have taken on an acquisition cost that is relatively neutral with regard to size. To me, any carrier needs to be looking at the integration and use of technology – not just in tracking, but also in forecasting; using the data that you have to forecast what made most sense – whether it’s optimizing a run or optimizing your traffic patterns based on idle time, length of haul, the amount of time the truck is loaded or how long it takes to load and unload the truck – these are the kinds of thought processes that carriers are going to have to go through in sorting out what freight makes sense for them, what doesn’t, what’s cost effective and what’s profitable and what isn’t.

What are I think that secondly, cost – cost – cost is going to be key to the future. Anyone today who’s not focusing on every aspect of cost in their business – they better start. In the 40 years I’ve been in this business, I’ve never seen the impact of cost on decisions like we’ve seen in the past year, and of course fuel drove that. But fuel was only a piece of that; fuel was the last straw that broke the camel’s back in a chain of events that have increased carrier’s costs over the last 10 or 15 years – there’s drivers’ wages, there’s insurance, liability and fuel was the single biggest impact that we’ve seen over the last year or so. Cost has become the single biggest determinant factor and probably the biggest competitive weapon that most carriers are using today – focus on cost!

If you’re a trucking executive today, in a fleet of any size, the thought that any one single person can capture all of the ingredients necessary to operate a multi-facetted, multi-modal, multinational fleet today is very challenging and I think that if you’re a fleet manager today, I think people that can think creatively, that can understand the business, are the people that you’re going to want to surround yourself with and clearly you’re going to want to surround yourself with a very few, very good people.

This is an industry that, whether it’s the manufacturing side or whether it’s the carrier side, experience is going to count a lot in the next several years - experience with in-depth knowledge in virtually every aspect of business management. The ability to go outside of our industry and pull people in and think that they’re going to be able to create solutions to challenges, having never experienced the trucking or transportation business, it just isn’t going to happen - the learning curve, if you’re in this business, is far too steep.

Find the people that are in your organization and if they’re not in your organization, steal them - and if they’re good, train them – because knowledgeable people who understand the business but also can think creatively about what the challenges and opportunities are in the future are going to be the key to success.