The CEO of $12 billion Ryder System discovered a huge strategic blind spot after a simple question from someone in the office supplies business.

Ryder system CEO Robert Sanchez learned that early in his tenure at the top spot. Sanchez has been CEO of the transportation and supply chain management company since 2013, and when he got the job he brought with him two decades of experience in finance, technology and operations. After a short five months of being appointed CEO, he became Chairman of the Board of Directors in May 2013.

As president, Sanchez leads an annual strategy session with the other ten directors on Company’s Board of Directorswhich has the power to appoint and fire the CEO. Annual reviews are an opportunity for board members to conduct a post-mortem study of the previous year, talk about the coming year, and preview three-year strategic projections so directors can implement Ryder’s plans.

“It’s a great time for board members to test our strategy and think about it in different ways,” said Sanchez, who previously served as CFO, COO and CIO at Ryder, which had $12.6 billion in revenue last year. year. “We almost look at it as an annual fee gate where we sit down with them and say, ‘Okay, these are the things we told you we were going to do last year. These are what we accomplished, and these are the new things we want to accomplish.’

Sanchez said it was at an annual strategy session luckOne of the most shining moments emerged. Sanchez and other senior executives were talking about market share in the truck rental and leasing business known as Fleet Management Solutions, while board members listened. At the time, Ryder had between 35% and 40% of the truck rental market segment, which was nothing worth paying attention to.

“We felt good,” Sanchez said.

And then a board member from a completely different industry raised his hand to ask a question that would ultimately become a very pivotal moment for Sanchez, his team, and Ryder.

“Does this mean that 40% of the trucks on the road are Ryder?” – asked the director.

“And I said, ‘Well, no, of course not,'” Sanchez recalls. “Then he wonders: Why is that? What are all the other truck owners doing? Are they renting from someone else? Are they getting customized service from someone else?”

“No,” Sanchez told the director. Other operators on the route will likely purchase their own trucks and have their own drivers. Director Sanchez asked bluntly: “Why don’t you guys go after them?”

“So, we all just stared at each other and said, ‘We’re going to have to get back to you,'” Sanchez said.

For context, the leasing market at that time represented only 15% to 20% of all trucks on the road. This means that 80% to 85% have purchased and maintained their own trucks. So the main idea was why Ryder didn’t go after him Which Truck ownership market: 80% to 85%. So, for a full year after that, Sanchez and his team strategized how to weed out all the companies that didn’t rent trucks from Ryder or any of its competitors, and didn’t outsource transportation to them.

“We realized that a large percentage of the market was manufacturing the products ourselves,” Ryder said. “So our strategy over the last 12 to 13 years has probably been to carve out the do-it-yourself market when it comes to trucking and transportation.”

The independent director who asked the question? His background is in office supplies and has nothing to do with trucking. But he asked the question that crystallized a strategic vision that helped drive more than a decade of implementation.

“In hindsight, it was pretty obvious,” Sanchez said. “But as a company that’s been around for 80 years, we haven’t really looked at it that way.”