TruckAnswers, a provider of trucking decision support software, has introduced a series of trucking financial performance indexes to guide purchasing and investment decision making for trucking companies and their vendors.

The indexes provide vital baseline information for financial improvement as the US trucking industry seeks to recover from a difficult two-year freight recession. They include:

  • The National Trucking Profitability Index (NTPI) - which tracks the overall financial health of the US trucking industry and the changing factors impacting bottom lines at fleets.
  • The National Trucking Cost Index (NTCI) - which tracks the main operating costs for US fleets and the factors which influence cost sensitivities.

“Our goal is to meet an industry need for more accurate and timely methods for benchmarking,” according to TruckAnswers CEO Drew Ryder. “Fleets need faster access to reliable and relevant data which can inform purchasing and investment decisions and drive up their future operating margins. Trucking is too tough an industry to drive blind and make bad decisions.”

Ryder said the TruckAnswers indexes can also be used by both fleets and vendors needing to test new products and practices and evaluate their value to the fleet’s bottom line. “By baselining and tracking key variable costs more efficiently, they will have more confidence in the results and conclusions of the trials. This is valuable for equipment testing, safety technology testing, or experiments with payment of bonuses and incentives. If we can help compress the time and cost it takes to run the evaluations, the fleet wins and so does the vendor trying to sell the product or service.”

TruckAnswers is also launching a series of regional and application-specific indexes to provide a more accurate and relevant source of comparison data for fleets including:

  • The Truckload Profitability Index (TPI) and Truckload Cost Index (TCI) - which track the financial health and costs of national and regional truckload carriers.
  • The LTL Profitability Index (LPI) and LTL Cost Index (LCI) - which track the financial health and costs of national and regional LTL carriers.
  • The Vocational Profitability Index (VPI) and Vocational Cost Index (VCI) - which track the financial health and costs of vocational fleets in industries such as construction, agriculture, and energy.

“We will continue to broaden the scope of the applications we cover as we engage with different fleet types,” Ryder said. “We have a methodology to weight the cost and revenue sensitivities for each fleet so that they are comparing apples to apples and making the best possible decisions to improve.”