Embracing the New Year from CEO, Dale Decker - 1.8.25
TO: ALL DECKER EMPLOYEES AND PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FROM: DALE DECKER, CEO DATE: JANUARY 8, 2025 RE: EMBRACING THE NEW YEAR
Dear Team,
As we embark on a fresh year, I would like to take a moment to reflect on our current standing and our future trajectory. 2025 holds significant importance for us, not only as an opportunity to capitalize on our achievements in 2024 amidst challenging market conditions in the transportation industry, but also as a year to seize the opportunities that lie ahead.
As I mentioned in my letter a few weeks ago, 2024 was a year marked by substantial progress in our initiatives. These initiatives were not solely aimed at mitigating the impact of the freight downturn, but rather at positioning the company for long-term success, as we anticipate a rebound in 2025 and being able to best capitalize on it.
As we intentionally reduced our fleet size in 2024 to align with the declining freight volumes, we seized the opportunity to devise a strategic plan that would enable us to navigate the slow down while preparing for the anticipated resurgence in a manner that we would grow back in a better way than before. Growing our freight network by analyzing opportunities and pricing them accordingly to build a more robust and high-quality freight network. Simultaneously, we’ll focus our hiring efforts more closely aligned with our network, ensuring a complementary relationship that minimizes deadhead and reduces poor revenue movements.
While 2024 was a year to stabilize in a challenging market, we used that time to plan our growth with a stronger foundation in several ways. Some of these changes are already evident, while others are yet to come. Our focus is on in-depth budgetary planning, accountability and performance, new business development, and aligned growth.
As we embark on 2025, we feel optimistic that we have entered a recovery market. The encouraging signs we’ve observed through December, coupled with the numerous new business awards we’ve received, indicate that this is the beginning of an upward trend. In addition to the initiatives, we’ve implemented with Driver Leaders to enhance driver support and Customer Service to optimize freight picking and planning, these efforts are demonstrating substantial improvements in our operational efficiency.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll continue our planning efforts for this year. I’ll share our overall goals and objectives for this year and some initiatives on how we plan to achieve them this year, hoping it clarifies our direction and the steps we’ll take to get there.
Although the trucking economy has been challenging for some time, I feel more optimistic than ever that we are truly addressing the fundamental aspects necessary for our company’s long-term success and growth. We are tackling many long-standing issues like never before and are also developing a strategy to establish a solid foundation that will not only serve us well in the short term but also pave the way for sustained and substantial growth in the future.
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