Operations

From July print edition: New directions for truck makers

Aug. 9, 2010

Truck makers today might well feel like beat cops trying to direct traffic at a frantically busy intersection

Truck makers today might well feel like beat cops trying to direct traffic at a frantically busy intersection. It is swirling around them — the changing needs of global customers, pressures to reduce product costs while improving efficiency, raw material and component shortages, wild swings in demand, even wilder regulatory requirements, rapidly evolving technologies, plus restricted access to capital. It is all there and more at this busiest of industry intersections.

OEMs are no strangers to managing change, but today's marketplace presents some unique new challenges and conflicting demands. Their success at this crossroads will impact fleets for years to come. The strategies they employ to guide them, and their customers, through this crossroads will determine their prosperity in the future.

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About the Author

Wendy Leavitt

Wendy Leavitt joined Fleet Owner in 1998 after serving as editor-in-chief of Trucking Technology magazine for four years.

She began her career in the trucking industry at Kenworth Truck Company in Kirkland, WA where she spent 16 years—the first five years as safety and compliance manager in the engineering department and more than a decade as the company’s manager of advertising and public relations. She has also worked as a book editor, guided authors through the self-publishing process and operated her own marketing and public relations business.

Wendy has a Masters Degree in English and Art History from Western Washington University, where, as a graduate student, she also taught writing.