According to Fortune, Ryder System CEO Robert Sanchez discovered a massive strategic blind spot in 2013 when a board member from the office supplies industry asked a simple question about market share. The $12.6 billion transportation company thought it dominated with 35-40% of the truck leasing market, but the director asked whether that meant 40% of all trucks on the road were from Ryder. When Sanchez said no, the follow-up question revealed that 80-85% of the truck market actually owned their vehicles rather than leasing. This single exchange prompted a complete strategic shift that has guided Ryder’s approach for the past 12-13 years, focusing on converting the “do-it-yourself” truck ownership market.
The question that changed everything
Here’s the thing about being inside an industry for decades – you develop blind spots that seem obvious in hindsight. Ryder had been around for 80 years and dominated their corner of the truck leasing world. They were the big fish in what they thought was the entire pond. But the pond was actually much, much larger than they realized.
When that board member asked “Why aren’t you guys going after them?” about the truck owners, it was one of those forehead-slapping moments. The leasing market they’d been fighting over represented only 15-20% of total trucks on the road. The other 80-85% were companies buying and maintaining their own fleets. Basically, they’d been ignoring the vast majority of their potential customers because they were so focused on the competition they could see.
Why missed opportunities happen
This is classic industry myopia. Companies get so focused on their direct competitors and existing business models that they miss adjacent opportunities that are staring them in the face. Ryder was measuring success by market share within leasing, not thinking about the total addressable market of all truck operations.
And honestly, this happens everywhere. It’s why sometimes the most valuable insights come from outsiders who don’t know “how things are done” in your industry. The office supplies executive wasn’t weighed down by decades of trucking industry assumptions. He just saw numbers that didn’t add up and asked the obvious question.
The industrial perspective
This kind of strategic blind spot is particularly common in industrial sectors where companies have long histories and established ways of doing business. Whether you’re in transportation, manufacturing, or logistics, it’s easy to get trapped in conventional thinking. That’s why having the right monitoring and control systems matters – companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, often see how better data visibility helps organizations spot opportunities they might otherwise miss.
The Ryder story shows that sometimes you need both the deep industry expertise and the fresh outside perspective. The technical teams knew everything about truck leasing operations, but it took someone from office supplies to ask the fundamental business question that revealed the bigger picture.
Lessons learned
Sanchez admitted it was “pretty obvious” in hindsight, which is usually how these things go. The company’s recent SEC filings and financial reports show how this strategic shift has played out over the past decade. They’ve been systematically going after that DIY market ever since.
So what’s the takeaway? Don’t get so focused on beating your direct competitors that you forget to look at the entire market landscape. Sometimes the biggest opportunities are right next to what you’re already doing – you just need someone with fresh eyes to point them out.
