One bite at a time: how fleets really fix culture

Published on July 23, 2025

You’ve landed on the Best Fleets site, skimmed the 2025 results book, and realized there’s a lot you’d love to improve. But how? Your brain spits out a dozen ideas with no clear plan.

At the 2025 Best Fleets To Drive For Conference (BFCon25), one session tackled that head-on. Titled “One Bite at a Time: How to Get Started Building a Great Workplace,” it focused on how best performing fleets make real progress, without trying to fix everything at once.

Because here’s the thing: culture change is massive. Try to take it all on at once, and you’ll choke. The fleets that succeed don’t do more. They do less—better, and more often.

At BFCon25, we sat down with Tim Chrulski of Garner Trucking to explore what steady, meaningful culture change really looks like in practice. Garner is a Hall of Fame fleet, an eight-time Best Fleets winner, and a perfect example of the old expression “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”.

Progress is a process: steady beats flashy

If you want to change your culture, don’t treat it like a Q1 project or a checklist to knock off before your Best Fleets interview. Real progress doesn’t come from quick wins or copy-pasting someone else’s ideas. It takes time, context, and commitment.

As Chrulski explained, every fleet is a unique ecosystem. What works for one company won’t automatically work for another. Garner starts by diving into the Best Fleets Results Book, analyzing strengths and weaknesses with their team, and building a strategy together. The process is fully collaborative, drawing in both leadership and frontline teams to shape the plan from all angles.

That’s the elephant. Then comes the bite: zooming in on one area and digging deep.

Garner relies heavily on driver feedback to steer their priorities. But generalities like “the equipment sucks” or “we need better pay” won’t cut it. Chrulski puts it plainly: “When drivers say, ‘The pay on this lane needs to be improved,’ or ‘Loading pay is an issue,’ now you’ve got something actionable.”

The key isn’t to fix everything. It’s to choose one or two meaningful areas and stay focused. Maybe you fine-tune onboarding this year and pilot peer mentoring the next. The best fleets commit to steady, layered progress. Because when you keep at it, year after year, those small shifts build something bigger: a stronger, more intentional fleet culture.

Use the whole year: don’t save it for survey season

When fleets treat the Best Fleets interview like a once-a-year performance review, they miss the bigger opportunity. Fleets that thrive use the Results Book as a leadership tool all year long.

At Garner Trucking, that means highlighters, margin notes, and a cross-departmental team gathered around the table. They revisit their Best Fleets feedback regularly, cross-check it with driver survey results, and track their progress in real time. As Chrulski said during the BFCon25 session while holding up his copy of the Best Fleets Results Book, “This doesn’t leave my desktop. The wheels have to stay in motion.”

For Garner, the Results Book isn’t a one-and-done report. It’s a daily reference used to spark conversations, set priorities, and keep progress on track.

That kind of year-round engagement turns the Best Fleets process from a checklist into a map. Projects get refined, adjusted, and reshaped. And by the time the next application rolls around, there’s visible change to show for it.

But progress doesn’t just come from motion. It comes from reflection. It’s not enough to launch a new program and consider it done. You have to check in after the rollout. Look at the data from the first few months, see what’s working, what’s not, and what surprised you. That’s how you know if your idea is actually doing what you hoped it would.

That mindset saved a nearly failed program at Garner. The team launched “The Road Ahead,” a monthly anonymous call-in session where drivers could speak candidly about issues, but it missed the mark. Participation was low, and the format wasn’t landing. Only after months of trial and adjustment—adding a peer facilitator, removing pre-set topics, and letting conversation flow organically—did the program finally click.

That’s the power of iteration. It’s not about bending your people to the program. It’s about bending the program to serve your people.

The bigger takeaway: Strong programs rarely start perfect. They take shape over time through feedback, experiments, and small course corrections. A good launch helps, but what really drives success is the follow-through: staying flexible and refining until the program fits the way your fleet actually works.

Case study: the pet policy years in the making

More and more fleets are recognizing that for many drivers, bringing a pet on the road isn’t just a perk. It’s a key part of feeling comfortable and supported. At the same time, some fleets hesitate to implement pet policies because of common concerns like allergies, cleanliness, or added maintenance.

At Garner Trucking, the idea didn’t roll out overnight. First, they did their homework, looking at what other fleets were doing and learning from their models. No need to reinvent the wheel when there’s already a roadmap.

Then came the risk assessment: cleaning costs, health concerns, and operational impact. With that in mind, they built a policy with clear structure: size limits, cleaning requirements, and personal accountability.

The result? A pet policy that worked for the company and the drivers.

What the best fleets know

Culture isn’t built in big moments. It’s shaped in daily decisions: what gets attention, what gets resourced, and what gets followed up on.

That’s why Best Fleets winners like Garner:

• Pay attention to what's working at peer companies
• Involve drivers in the problem-solving process
• Identify what really matters
• Start small and progress over the years
• Track ideas all year, not just in Q4
• Choose progress over polish
• Learn from other people's mistakes
• Borrow from others and adapt to your circumstances

Because even a quiet win can drive real change. And even if something’s not polished yet, it’s still worth pursuing.

One bite at a time

You don’t need a 25-point action plan. You need one next step and the discipline to follow through. That’s how high-performing trucking companies become and stay Best Fleets to Drive For.