This keynote recap is from FreightWaves’ Enterprise Fleet Summit.
KEYNOTE TOPIC: USA Truck’s culture shift to profitability.
SPEAKER: James Reed, CEO of USA Truck.
BIO: Reed joined USA Truck in 2016. Prior to that, the company had four CEOs in five years. Reed previously was CFO of Interstate Distributor Co., an asset-based trucking company, as well as president of its subsidiary, Interstate Distributor Logistics. He has more than 15 years experience as a financial leader for public companies.
KEY QUOTES FROM REED:
“We’ve continued to put up record results quarter in and quarter out. We think we’ve fundamentally changed the business and the way that we’ve done that is through overhauling our culture and creating a winning culture. People had learned to lose at USA Truck. And now they’ve learned to win. And the idea generation that results from that level of engagement from our employees is off the charts. We have more ideas about how to be more profitable and make better opportunities for ourselves than we ever did before.”
“We started with clarity about our strategy and what our goals were. We then engaged our organization to figure out what we valued and what our long-term vision was as an organization. From there we got maniacal about figuring out the behaviors to support our key results. And we’ve been very consistent and persistent about managing the cadence of our business with regular, sometimes daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly interactions that allow us to scorecard our results and align those with our behaviors and our values.”