You can tell very quickly if a fleet is run by a real operations leader or by a fire-fighter.
A real leader walks into the weekly meeting with a simple scorecard, knows exactly where the risks are, and is already one step ahead. The fire-fighter walks in asking, “So, what happened last week?”
Right now the U.S. market does not forgive fire-fighting.
Operating costs are sitting a little above 2.25 dollars per mile on average, according to recent industry research, while rates have been squeezed for most of 2024/25. Diesel has been swinging around the 4 dollar per gallon mark, which keeps every CFO awake. Freight demand is uneven by region and segment.
At the same time, we are still talking about a driver shortage, but now with a twist. The American Trucking Associations and other analysts are very clear: the shortage is increasingly about quality, not just headcount. Add new English-proficiency rules and tighter licensing rules for non-citizen drivers, and your driver pool just got more complicated overnight.
On top of that, cross-border freight with Mexico is growing as nearshoring continues, which brings its own delays, paperwork and capacity swings.
In this environment, “we will review the numbers at month end” is a good way to lose trucks, customers, and cash. You need a weekly operations scorecard that tells you, very bluntly, if your trucking operations are on track or drifting into trouble.
Below is what I believe every serious operations leader should track weekly, no excuses.
1. Market and Revenue: Are You Making Money This Week Or Just Moving Trucks?
Forget the 60-page P&L for a moment. Weekly, you need a clean view of how your revenue is reacting to current trucking trends and supply chain updates. At minimum:
- Loaded miles per truck per week
- Revenue per truck per week
- Rate per mile vs cost per mile (even estimated)
- Mix of contract vs spot freight
Here is the reality: in a soft or choppy market, your dispatch strategy often drifts. Dispatchers start grabbing any load “that covers miles”, especially when load boards look thin. You feel busy, but margin quietly dies.
Practical rule:
- If your loaded miles per truck are stable but your rate per mile has dropped for two or three weeks on a lane, that is not a coincidence. Either you are underpricing, or you are over-reliant on spot freight in that lane.
Weekly leadership question:
“Which 3 lanes lost margin this week and why did we still run them?”
If nobody can answer, your numbers are vanity data.
2. Fleet Health And Utilization: Are You Running A Fleet Or A Breakdown Lottery?
Telematics, ELD data and modern logistics technology can now scream warnings at you days before a truck fails. Studies on predictive maintenance show potential reductions of up to 20 percent in maintenance cost and up to 50 percent in unplanned outages when data is used properly.
Yet many fleets still wait until a truck is on the shoulder before they “pay attention”.
Weekly, track:
- Tractors available vs dispatched (true utilization)
- Empty miles percentage
- Road calls or unscheduled breakdowns per 100,000 miles
- Preventive maintenance (PM) on-time percentage
- Out-of-service units and reasons
Here is a simple example from a real operation pattern:
One 70-truck fleet kept seeing 2 or 3 road calls every week. They blamed “old equipment” and “bad luck”. Once they actually pulled weekly data, it turned out that 60 percent of road calls were from trucks that had missed PM windows by more than 1,500 miles. The problem was not luck. It was a leadership decision to stretch PMs.
This is where fleet optimization is not a buzzword. If your PM on-time percentage is below 90 percent and your breakdowns are rising, you are choosing short term capacity over long term uptime. That is not optimization, it is slow damage.
Weekly leadership question:
“Which 5 units scared us this week, and what are we doing so they do not scare us again?”
3. Drivers And People: Are You Managing A Roster Or A Revolving Door?
The industry still talks about the “driver shortage” as if there are no drivers at all. The more accurate picture for many regions is this: you have drivers, but not enough qualified, safe and stable drivers.
Your weekly scorecard should not wait until someone quits. Watch the early signals:
- Open seats vs total trucks
- New hires this week
- Voluntary quits this week
- No-show rate for orientation or training
- Safety leading indicators
If your open seats stay high while your no-show rate is climbing, your recruiting message is not aligned with reality on the yard. If your safety indicators are spiking, you are building future accidents right now.
Tie this to the new regulations and English-proficiency enforcement. They will remove some drivers from the road and keep others from entering. That means every good driver you already have just became more valuable. Losing them because your dispatch strategy ignores home time or constantly changes loads last minute is expensive and avoidable.
Weekly leadership questions:
- “Which driver should we call personally this week before they call a recruiter?”
- “What load or decision last week would make a driver want to leave?”
If HR is the only one watching these numbers, you are late already. Operations leaders should be in the middle of this.
4. Service And Customer Reality: Are You Actually Reliable Or Just Saying You Are?
Customers in 2025 are under their own pressure from tight inventories and nearshoring. When cross-border freight between the U.S. and Mexico is growing and lead times are unpredictable, shippers do not want speeches, they want reliability.
Weekly, track:
- On-time pickup percentage
- On-time delivery percentage
- Average dwell time at shipper and receiver
- Number of service failures by cause
- Tender rejection rate for key customers
Now the uncomfortable part: look at where you keep saying “customer delay” when the real issue is your own internal handoff.
Example scenario: Your report shows on-time delivery at 93 percent. Looks decent. Then you cut the data by customer and realize that for one high-volume shipper you are at 82 percent for the third week in a row. Last week they gave your competitor two extra loads. Are you surprised? You should not be.
Weekly leadership question:
“Which customers got hurt by us last week, and what are we changing this week?”
No excuses, no long emails. Just fix the behavior that is killing your reliability.
5. Cash And Risk: You Can Be Busy And Still Go Broke
Here is a trap many fleets fall into in a volatile market. Trucks are rolling, miles are good, but cash is suffocating.
So in your weekly scorecard, include:
- Days sales outstanding (DSO) or simply, “average days to get paid”
- Freight bills with disputes or short pays this week
- Detention and accessorial billed vs collected
- Number of claims and total value
- Any fines, violations or audits opened this week
Most fleets leak money in detention and small claims because “we are too busy to chase it”. When operating costs per mile are already high, that is a luxury you cannot afford.
Weekly leadership question:
“How much money did we give away this week because we did not document, bill or dispute properly?”
Your finance team should not be the only people who care about DSO and disputes. Dispatchers and planners need to see that their decisions either protect or destroy cash.
How To Run A Weekly Scorecard Review That Actually Changes Behavior
A lot of people will read all this and think, “Yes, we should make a dashboard.” Then nothing changes.
Keep it brutally simple:
- One page, same format every week
- Same time, same day, 30 to 45 minutes
- Only three questions:
- Name owners, not departments
- Tie actions back to trends
Final Thought: Weekly Numbers Are A Mirror, Not A Decoration
Most fleets today already have plenty of logistics technology, data, and dashboards. Telematics units are installed, TMS systems are live, ELD data is streaming. The problem is not a lack of information. The problem is leadership discipline.
A serious operations leader treats the weekly scorecard as non-negotiable. Not a “report” for the owner, but a mirror for themselves.
If you track these metrics weekly and actually act on them, three things will happen over time:
- Your breakdowns will feel less “random” because you stop ignoring early warnings.
- Your drivers will feel less like disposable capacity and more like partners in your trucking operations.
- Your dispatch strategy will shift from survival mode to strategic mode, which is where real fleet optimization and long term profit live.
If you are reading this and thinking, “We could set this up in our operation”, then be honest with yourself.
You do not need another spreadsheet or another fancy tool. You need to pick the metrics, print the scorecard, call the meeting, and keep showing up every week.
That is where leaders stay ahead of problems, while everyone else keeps asking, “What happened?” once it is already too late.
About the Author:
Bhavya Vashisht is the Director of Operations at Canamex Carbra Transportation and the voice behind Truck & Trade Trends. He shares field-tested insights from the frontlines of U.S. trucking and logistics to help fleets operate smarter, safer, and more profitably.
Connect with me on LinkedIn (Bhavya Vashisht) for more insights on trucking, logistics, and fleet optimization.
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