Driven for Success

Send us Fan Mail Why would a truck driver turn down extra take-home pay? It happens more often than many fleet owners expect. In this episode, Mike Ritzema explains why some drivers decline per diem and why those decisions are often based on legitimate personal circumstances rather than misunderstanding. You'll learn why concerns about mortgages, Social Security, past experiences, and trust a...

Send us Fan Mail A good truck driver per diem program can save drivers money, reduce payroll taxes, and benefit the entire company. But if it's rolled out poorly, it can create confusion, distrust, and unnecessary pushback from drivers. In this episode, Mike Ritzema shares the five steps every trucking company should follow before implementing per diem. You'll learn why education comes b...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking companies know per diem can save money. What many don't realize is there are three different ways to calculate it. Some fleets use a cents-per-mile method. Others use a percentage of driver pay. The third method calculates per diem based on qualifying travel days. In this episode, Mike Ritzema breaks down all three approaches, explains why companies use them, an...

Send us Fan Mail Truck driver per diem is often promoted as a way to save money, but how much does it actually save? In this episode of Driven for Success, Mike Ritzema breaks down the real math behind truck driver per diem and explains why many trucking company owners focus on the wrong number. You'll learn:  How per diem increases driver take-home pay   Where trucking companies save money ...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking company owners have heard of per diem. Most drivers have heard of per diem. But very few people can clearly explain what it actually is. In this episode of Driven for Success, Mike Ritzema breaks down truck driver per diem in plain English and clears up some of the biggest misconceptions in the trucking industry. You'll learn:  What truck driver per diem actuall...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking company owners don't have a time problem. They have a decision problem. When every question, exception, approval, and problem comes back to the owner, the business starts to feel chaotic—even when you have good people on the team. In this episode of Driven for Success, Mike Ritzema explains why most owners make the mistake of trying to systemize everything at on...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking companies do not feel chaotic because they hired bad people. They feel chaotic because everybody is filling in the blanks differently. One manager says yes.  Another says no.  Drivers get different answers depending on who they ask.  And eventually everything starts flowing back to the owner. In this episode, Mike Ritzema breaks down why chaos in growing trucking com...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking companies don’t have a people problem. They have a repetition problem. The owner keeps answering the same questions over and over again… and every unanswered process slowly turns the owner into the bottleneck. In this episode of Driven for Success, Mike Ritzema breaks down why growing trucking companies get stuck in operational chaos — not because employees are bad,...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking company owners think process problems are people problems. They’re not. In this episode of Driven for Success, Mike Ritzema breaks down the hidden reason processes stop working as trucking companies grow. Because most of the time… your team is not resisting the system. They’re adapting to reality faster than the system is. You’ll learn:  Why employees create “shadow...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking owners think they need to delegate more. They don’t. They need to stop giving away the wrong decisions. In this episode, we break down why some decisions should never leave the owner—and what happens when they do. Because when direction gets delegated, your business doesn’t get easier to run. It gets inconsistent. We cover how to identify the decisions that define yo...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking companies aren’t overpaying drivers on purpose. But if you’re paying drivers a percentage of revenue… there’s a good chance it’s happening anyway. In this episode, I break down a common mistake that can quietly eat into your margins—paying drivers on revenue without separating out fuel. When diesel prices rise, revenue goes up.  Driver pay goes up.  But profit doesn’...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking company owners don’t have a people problem. They have a decision problem. If every question still comes back to you, your business isn’t lacking effort… it’s lacking context. In this episode, we break down why your team struggles to make decisions without you—and how to fix it without micromanaging or stepping back completely. You’ll learn:  Why people don’t actually...

Send us Fan Mail If your team isn’t following your processes, it’s easy to get frustrated. You put the time in to build the system. You explained it. And yet, people still do something different. In this episode of Driven for Success , we break down a simple way to think about why this happens—and what to do about it. There are really only three reasons someone doesn’t follow a process:  They didn...

Send us Fan Mail If you're running a trucking company and trying to delegate more… but you're not sure what decisions you should still be making—this episode is for you. After realizing they’ve become the bottleneck, many owners swing too far in the other direction and try to hand off everything. That usually creates more confusion, not less. In this episode of Driven for Success , we br...

Send us Fan Mail If you run a trucking company with 20 to 80 trucks and feel like everything still runs through you… you’re not alone. At this stage, many owners hit a point where growth slows down—not because of bad people, but because the business still depends on them for too many decisions. In this episode of Driven for Success , we break down:  Why becoming the bottleneck is actually a sign o...

Send us Fan Mail In growing trucking companies, a pattern quietly takes hold. Every question starts going to the owner. Dispatch asks.  Payroll asks.  Safety asks.  Operations asks. And over time, the company stops building decision-makers. It builds escalators. In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike Ritzema shares a simple leadership shift that starts breaking that pattern. One question: “W...

Send us Fan Mail Early in the life of a trucking company, the owner usually is the smartest person in the room . They know the customers.  They know the lanes.  They know the drivers.  They’ve solved almost every problem before. That knowledge often builds the company. But if that pattern never changes, it creates what Mike Ritzema calls an intelligence bottleneck . All the thinking stays with the...

Send us Fan Mail As trucking companies grow, something subtle begins to happen inside the business. Dispatch escalates decisions.  Payroll escalates questions.  Safety escalates problems.  Operations escalates anything uncertain. Eventually, everything ends up in the same place: the owner’s desk . In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike Ritzema explains the escalation habit that forms inside...

Send us Fan Mail Most trucking company owners don’t stall because of bad software or bad people. They stall because every “quick question” still lands on their desk. In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike talks about the system most growing fleets avoid building — a decision framework that clearly defines who decides what, when it escalates, and when it doesn’t. If you’re running 20–80 truck...

Send us Fan Mail As trucking fleets grow into the 30–50 truck range, most owners know they need systems — but they don’t know where to start. Should you fix payroll? Dispatch? Hiring? Maintenance? In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike Ritzema explains why the first system that breaks isn’t operational — it’s decision ownership. When decision clarity is missing: The same questions come back...

Send us Fan Mail As trucking fleets grow, owners often track more numbers than ever — revenue, cost per mile, turnover, utilization. But more data doesn’t always mean more control. In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike Ritzema explains why many of the most common metrics fleet owners rely on are lagging indicators and how measuring the wrong things can quietly reinforce chaos instead of red...

Send us Fan Mail As trucking fleets grow past 20–50 trucks, many owners start noticing something uncomfortable:  good people seem overwhelmed, reactive, or burned out — even though they care and work hard. In this episode of Driven for Success , Mike Ritzema explains why burnout in growing fleets is rarely a motivation problem — and almost always a systems problem. You’ll learn: Why effort stops w...

Send us Fan Mail When trucking companies grow into the 30–50 truck range, most owners don’t struggle because they don’t know what needs to change. They struggle because everything feels urgent . Hiring needs work.  Pay policies feel messy.  Exceptions keep piling up.  And every system seems like it needs attention at once. In this episode, we talk about why trying to fix everything at the same tim...

Send us Fan Mail Somewhere between 25 and 60 trucks, many fleet owners start to feel resistance when new systems are introduced. Not because the systems won’t work — but because they feel rigid, bureaucratic, or “not like us.” In this episode of Driven for Success , we talk about why that discomfort shows up right when a business is ready for its next stage of growth. We explore why flexibility wo...

Send us Fan Mail Somewhere between 30 and 50 trucks, a subtle shift happens for most fleet owners. The business is bigger. Revenue is there. Fewer fires are breaking out day to day.  And yet, it still feels like everything depends on you. In this episode, we talk about why that happens — and why it’s usually not a motivation problem, a leadership failure, or a lack of delegation. More often, growt...