The Best Fleets secret weapon you’re probably ignoring

Published on August 20, 2025

How to use the award application process to strengthen your business

If you think the only point of entering a competition is to win, you’re missing the real value. For many trucking companies, Best Fleets to Drive For has become a tool for improvement, a chance to audit programs, strengthen culture, and drive meaningful change, regardless of their final ranking.

At the Best Fleets To Driver For Conference (BFCon) in Charlotte, North Carolina, in March 2025, carriers across multiple sessions described how the Best Fleets questionnaire acted as a magnifying glass for them, exposing blind spots and contradictions and highlighting opportunities for growth. And from our vantage point as program runners, we see this every year: fleets improve, even if they don’t make the Top 20.

The framework encourages self-reflection, clarity, and action. It invites fleets to ask hard questions. Not just about what they offer, but how consistently it’s delivered, and whether drivers actually experience it that way. The act of applying becomes an annual audit that keeps teams focused, honest, and aligned.

In this article, we’ll explore how forward-thinking fleets use the Best Fleets program to build a stronger culture, sharper operations, and safer roads.

Part I: How applying for Best Fleets becomes an audit, not just an entry

We developed the Best Fleets questionnaire over years to create an objective way for us to measure fleets. As a result, it has become a structured diagnostic tool. By walking through it, fleets are forced to look at their own systems with fresh eyes. Do we really have a policy for that? When did we last update it? Do drivers know it exists, and do they actually feel it in practice?

For many carriers, this step alone is transformative.

In the “One Bite at a Time” session, a fleet leader described how the questionnaire helped them uncover outdated policies and realize that “yes, we had a policy, but no one was following it.” The process gave them a new way to cross-check how drivers experienced their company, versus how office staff described it. That gap, once revealed, became the starting point for realignment.

Fleets often discover:

• A disconnect between departments, especially when safety, HR, and operations all assume someone else is handling a task.
• Programs that exist on paper but haven’t been rolled out consistently.
• Missed opportunities to support drivers, simply because no one had asked the right questions before.

Completing the application becomes a team effort, pulling input from multiple departments, checking assumptions, and forcing decisions that otherwise would’ve stayed vague or unspoken.

The strongest fleets treat this process like an annual checkup. We’ve even heard from fleets that don’t plan to submit, but still use the questionnaire internally to guide self-assessment and improve alignment across the company.

Participating in the Best Fleets program provides you with a clearer picture of your own organization.

Part II: How the survey and interview reveal blind spots

On the surface, the Best Fleets process is just a questionnaire. In practice, it’s a two-way mirror. Once the application is in, two more tools kick in: the driver survey and the follow-up interview. That’s where things get real.

Driver surveys

At BFCon25, carriers repeatedly shared how surprised they were by the feedback they received. Not because it was shocking, but because it highlighted the gap between what they thought they were doing and what drivers were actually experiencing.

A carrier may have feel confident in their onboarding process, only to learn from survey comments that drivers feel overwhelmed and unsupported in their first week. Another may pride themselves on strong communication… until the driver survey flags recurring confusion around schedules and performance feedback.

This kind of input can sting, but it’s also what makes Best Fleets powerful. It creates a structured opportunity to:

• Hear directly from drivers, without the filter of department heads or gatekeepers
• Uncover unspoken tension between departments
• Validate what’s working and spotlight what’s not

Interviews

The interview itself often sparks deeper reflection. As Jane Jazrawy noted in “Building Workplace Culture,” some fleets try to give the “right” answers, only to realize mid-interview that those answers don’t hold up under scrutiny. That moment of discomfort becomes the entry point to change.

Fleets that lean into this part of the process—curiously, not defensively—end up learning the most. Because when you ask the right questions and listen with intention, you don’t just find problems. You uncover potential.

Part III: How the framework fuels culture, not just checklists

You don’t need a Top 20 finish to benefit from Best Fleets. In fact, many of the stories shared at BFCon25 come from fleets still climbing. They hadn’t won yet, but they were building something stronger, year by year.

That’s because Best Fleets encourages a shift in mindset: one that values evolution over execution. Instead of just asking “Did we check the box?” fleets begin asking “Did this actually work?” and “How do we make it better next year?”

For these fleets, the post-evaluation scorecard becomes a blueprint. Some hold internal debriefs with department heads to review results line by line: what scored well, what didn’t, and why. Others create year-over-year comparisons to track their growth or even use their results to set quarterly KPIs.

What’s key is that fleets come to realization that chasing someone else’s formula isn’t a viable path. Best Fleets isn’t about copying the winners. What worked for one company may not make sense for another.

Best Fleets gives carriers a shared framework to carve their own path and get a little farther each year. So if you know that you have copycat tendencies, shift away from them and start moving toward self-directed improvement. That philosophy will set you apart as a high-performing culture!

It’s not what you win, it’s what you learn

Some fleets use their scorecard as a foundation for strategic planning. Others use it to align departments around shared goals. Even the act of completing the application can prompt better communication between leadership and frontline teams. In any case, that habit of reflection always pays off.

Best Fleets is, above all, a tool to sharpen your focus. And the smartest fleets treat the whole process as an opportunity to grow, because in a business where small gaps lead to big problems, asking better questions is one of the most powerful things you can do.