S1 E37 The Real Reason Your Trucking Team Can't Make Decisions (and How to Fix It)

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 make bad decisions 
•  The real reason your team keeps coming back to you 
•  How to use rules, guardrails, and examples to improve decision-making 
•  A simple way to turn everyday questions into long-term systems 

If you want to stop being the bottleneck and start building a team that can think and act independently, this episode will give you a practical path to get there.

👉 Learn more at: https://truckingpayroll.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Most trucking companies don't stall because of bad people working there. They stall because the owner is making every decision. At five trucks, that worked just fine. At 15 to 25 trucks, it really starts to strain. And by 40 to 60 trucks, it just full-on breaks. Your team isn't the bottleneck. You are, because every decision still runs through you if you're the owner and you're still working this way. A team member asks you a question, and you give them a quick answer, and everyone moves on with their day, but nothing gets captured, no rule gets created, and the same question comes back every day, every week. And so you stay in the middle of everything. Welcome to Driven for Success, the podcast where we help trucking company owners and executives run their business with better process, less chaos, and lower driver turnover. I'm your host, Mike Ritzma, founder of Superior Trucking Payroll Service, where our mission is simple: help trucking families. This podcast is one of the ways that we fulfill that mission. And today we're building directly on episode 34. This is episode 37, so go back three episodes if you want to know what we're talking about. Not just how to create systems, but how to get your team to make better decisions without you. Isn't that really the goal? Isn't that what you had in mind when you started the company that when you got to 30 trucks, people will be able to make these decisions without you? That's what we all want, and this will help you get there. You know, we we solve the repeat questions. Now we're going to solve the decision bottleneck. Here's the thing I want you to remember: people don't make bad decisions, they lack context. If someone keeps coming back to you with the same question over and over again, or a very slight variation on the exact same question, it's not because they're incapable. It's because they didn't have enough to work with. They didn't have all the information. And when people don't have context, they hesitate, or worse, they guess what you meant. If you want your team to make better decisions, you have to give them three things. You have to give them rules, guardrails, and examples. So let's start with rules. Rules are non-negotiables, they are evergreen, they are 100% all of the time. They don't change. Things like we always pay our drivers correctly, or we never lie to a customer, or you know, our driver hiring requirement requires this many points or less within a year. Whatever your rules are, those things are absolute, then they remove uncertainty. So your team doesn't have to guess on those things, they don't have to guess what matters. They already know. And if a decision breaks a rule, it's not a decision, it's a hard no. So these things should never have to come to you because the rule should be clear to everyone. We don't hire drivers with more than two points in the last year. Okay, well, this driver has four points. Can I hire them? No. Exactly how that should work. That decision never comes back up to you. The next part is guardrails. And this is where a lot of owners struggle. They either control everything or they let everything go. Micromanagement slows everything down, and that's true. And so the opposite of that is no management, which also slows everything down, oddly enough, because no structure just creates chaos and creates 10 different ways of doing the exact same thing. Which that uncertainty just makes it so hard for anyone to know what to expect. There are times for drama, usually it's a movie. We don't need drama at work, and having 10 different ways of doing the same thing is drama. Speed comes from clarity, not control. Guardrails define the range your team can operate in. For example, you could say something like you can resolve client issues up to $200 in the rate without an approval. Or you can give a driver an extra $50 on such and such a load with certain qualifications, you know, once a week. Or like if you're booking a backhaul, you know, this is what's important. It's important to get them home. The rate isn't as big a deal. We just need to get them home quickly so we can make money on the headhull again, or something like that. So it's not an exact everything, but it tells them what we're trying to accomplish. And now they can move without stopping to ask you if that backhaul is okay. You're giving them some range to work and you're letting them make decisions, but you're giving them guardrails so that they know which decisions are okay and which ones are not. Third is examples. This is a missing piece for a lot of trucking companies. Uh, most owners explain what to do, but they don't explain the why. They don't explain how they think about it and how they got to that conclusion of what to do. When a situation comes up, don't just give the answer, walk the person who asked through it. You know, tell them here's why I made this decision. Here are the things I was thinking about when I made that decision, and here's the thing that mattered the most. And if you can convey that to the person asking those questions, and those questions are really never going to go away. But these again are a small number of the questions that you'll get in a day if you don't have rules and guidelines and things like that before it. But this is how your team starts to think like you, because they're going to hear exactly what your what your thought process was. And so then they can apply that the next time that decision comes up. And instead of saying, What should I do? They might say, Okay, I have the situation. Here's what I think we should do. What do you think? And then after that, a few times it might be, here's what I think we should do, and this is what I did. Was it okay?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

And that all moves much faster. So let's make this real. What does it look like in real life?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

A team member brings you a question. Most owners just snap off an answer right away and move on. Get back to what they were doing before the person asked them a question. But that doesn't fix anything long term. That question is guaranteed to come back again and again. And you'll answer it again and again, and the cycle will never end. If every answer doesn't become a system, the question is coming back. It will come back tomorrow and next week and next month.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

So instead, turn that moment into something reusable.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

You start with what's the rule here? Is there a rule that applies with one of the 100% things? And if there's not, what are the guardrails? What are the parameters in which the person could have made the decision? And if we don't have guardrails for this thing, then go to how would I think through this? You know, come up with it, how give them the answer and tell them how you got there and tell them what was important and what would have changed the answer the other way. If, you know, because of this load had for this customer, it was different than for somebody else. What made it that answer? Then that one answer becomes something you can use again and again. It becomes a policy for them and they can apply it themselves before it ever gets to you. If your team keeps coming back to you, it's not a motivational problem, it's not a talent problem, it's a context problem. They're just trying to get it right, they want to do a good job for you, they want to achieve the results that you want to achieve. They just don't have enough to go on to be able to make that decision. Every time you answer without context, you train your team to come back to you. I know that's not what you may want to hear, but it's the truth. And if you look back at the conversations that you've had over the last week, questions from your employees, these are all the times you probably answer that same question without explaining it a bunch of times. So just explain what you're thinking, and maybe they can get farther along in the answer and maybe ask them do we have a rule about this? Do we have a guideline about this? How do you think I would make that decision? You can make them answer those same questions too, and just reconcile the thought process to yours and see if they're then you'll be training them to make the decision and just checking with you.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Here's where to start. Pick one decision that keeps coming back, just one. Next time it happens, don't just answer it. Start with clarifying if there's a rule and then define some guardrails for them. And then if we hit that far, explain your thinking. Then if that decision doesn't solve itself, you have a new policy you can write.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Because usually the decision doesn't just solve it. When you give them the decision, it just solves the immediate problem. It doesn't make it go away forever.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

But a good answer solves one problem, context solves the next hundred. Think about that. You could solve it in a way where you won't have to answer it again.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Think about the time that frees up. It's sure one question is no big deal, but having that go away forever, that would be tremendous. When was the last time you were solved a problem that you had never heard of before? Right? So, with that in mind, if you solve the problem using context, explaining how you're thinking, you're gonna get a lot less questions. Your goal is not just to answer questions, it's to build a team that can make decisions. That requires clear rules, defined guardrails, and consistent examples. If you're working through this and trying to get out of the middle of every decision, we've got resources that walk you through how to build systems your team can actually use. Go to truckingpayroll.com or truckingpayroll.com slash podcast or truckingpayroll.com slash blog, and you'll see a whole bunch of articles and podcast episodes that talk about all of these things. Because decisions improve when context improves. Your job isn't to make every decision, it's to build people who can.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

If you fix this, your team gets faster. And when your team gets faster, your business grows.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I'm gonna leave you with that thought for this week. Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe to the podcast. That's how more people find it. If you've got any feedback, hit us up at truckingpayroll.com. We'd love to hear what you have to say, and thanks for listening.