"Trucking has become a knowledge-based business. "

Enter with us into the new Millennium!

We've come a long way since horse-drawn wagons evolved into trucks at the beginning of the 20th century, and now we're about to enter a future where the pace of change and the look of the trucking business will be unlike anything we've experienced so far.

An industry that for years was considered evolutionary rather than revolutionary, trucking now is being swept forward on the winds of e-commerce and information technology. Trucks themselves have already been made electronically "smart," and are getting smarter. Highway systems are following suit. And freight shipments aren't just "hauled" anymore, they're scientifically routed and controlled to meet precise delivery standards and schedules.

But that's just for starters. The pace of change will accelerate and the management skills of tomorrow's trucking leaders will have to keep pace. Equipment will change, maintenance practices will change, and customer demands will change. New demographics will reshape the employee landscape. Competition will get tougher and come from surprising new places. And underlying all of that will be the relentless drive to do everything faster, better, and more cost-efficiently.

Those challenging thoughts and our impending arrival at a thousand-year threshold inspired us to take a look ahead at where the trucking industry is headed and the forces that are influencing its direction. To do that, our editors approached their subject on four different levels, exploring what might be considered some non-traditional themes as far as trucking is concerned: management skills; customer service; economic and demographic trends; and business ethics. But it is in those fields, they say, that the forces that will reshape tomorrow will emerge.

Along with that, we are presenting in a special advertising section the thoughts and views of an impressive lineup of trucking's top manufacturers and suppliers, each of whom addresses the industry's future from its own unique vantage point. The result is a collective vision of the market that every fleet manager should carefully read and digest. Our thought heading into the project was this: What better way to offer our readers a vision of the future than through the eyes of the companies that will play the key roles in shaping it? You will be excited and challenged by what they have to say, as are we.

For Fleet Owner's role in your business lives is changing, as well. Your need for more information and faster communication is a challenge we readily accept. During the production of this supplement, one fleet manager we interviewed commented that "trucking is moving from a hardware-based industry to a knowledge-based business." For every pound of freight that's moved, he says, "we move a ton of data."

We have been privileged to have provided the nation's truck-fleet managers with the information to run their businesses better, safer, and more profitably, for most of the last century. Our commitment to you, our readers, is to continue in that role on into the New Millennium.