How We Shortened Decision Time by 42% in a Transport Company

The bottleneck at the president's desk

At Trans-Grójec, where we worked for 11 weeks, the problem was not a lack of orders, but a structure that had stopped developing at the stage of 5 trucks. With a fleet of 38 cars, each downtime generated a loss of around 840 PLN net per day for one set. Meanwhile, the decision-making process for vehicle servicing was structured so that the mechanic had to wait for the signature of the fleet manager, then the operations director, and finally the owner himself. The rules are clear: if a car is standing still, the company loses liquidity. In practice, this meant that changing brake pads, which should have taken 3 hours, took an average of 2.5 business days just because of the paperwork flow.

During our first analysis in May 2024, we noticed that President Dariusz spent nearly 14 hours a week signing invoices and purchase requests, which in 83% of cases were a pure formality. This was a classic example of a board veto, where a lack of trust in lower management levels blocked real profit. The owner was afraid of abuse but didn't calculate how much the time of all those people waiting at his door was costing him. No more board vetoes became our main goal to release the operational potential of the transport base.

If a car is standing still because of a missing signature on a 5,000 PLN invoice, you lose 840 PLN in profit every day.

Profit Roadmap and new permissions

We designed a document we called the Profit Roadmap for Trans-Grójec. The main premise was the decentralization of financial authority. Instead of forcing the owner to analyze every tire, we introduced decision thresholds based on concrete historical data from the last 14 months. The fleet manager received an independent limit of 12,400 PLN for routine repairs, provided they fit within the monthly service budget. This eliminated the need to run between floors with every pneumatic system fault or oil change for two cars at once.

Plan ratification by the board was not easy because it required the owner to give up part of his control. We had to show with hard numbers that 47% of delivery delays for a key food industry client resulted from the fact that the workshop was waiting for approval to buy parts. After introducing the new rules, the time from reporting a fault to the car leaving the service bay shortened from 58 hours to just 22 hours. This is a concrete change that translated into higher punctuality and fewer contractual penalties, which in the first quarter of 2024 cost the company 18,700 PLN.

The fleet manager received an independent limit of 12,400 PLN, which unblocked the workshop in one day.

Implementing the 'Fast Track' procedure

In June 2024, we launched a test module for a procedure we called 'Fast Track'. It consisted of digital approval of fixed costs through a simple notification system. We used existing tools but gave them a new hierarchy. Each of the 4 dispatchers was given clear guidelines: orders up to 8,000 PLN from regular contractors are accepted automatically if the margin does not fall below 14.2%. Thanks to this, the sales team stopped calling the boss during dinner to ask if they could take a return load from Lyon to Warsaw.

The effect was immediate. Within the first month, the number of handled orders increased by 11%, even though not a single new tractor was purchased. People simply stopped waiting for decisions that were predictable anyway. At the Institute for Market Reforms, we believe that order in the structure is not bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, but a tool for making more money with less owner effort. Dariusz could finally focus on negotiating a large contract for 2025 instead of checking if the price of brake pads at a wholesaler near Radom was 40 PLN lower than the competitor's.

Hard results after 6 months

Six months after our main intervention, the data from Trans-Grójec are clear. The time to make key operational decisions dropped by an average of 42%. Revenue per vehicle-kilometer increased by 3.1%, which at a scale of 38 cars gives annual savings and extra profit of around 156,000 PLN net. These are not magic tricks, just the result of removing redundant approval stages that served only to feed management's ego, not to protect the company's capital. The rules are clear: simplify the structure or watch the competition overtake you.

Our team of 5 specialists from the Institute for Market Reforms carefully analyzed every move in this company. It turned out that the simplest solutions, like changing the responsibility matrix, bring the fastest results. By the way, the owner of Trans-Grójec went on a two-week vacation for the first time in 7 years in July 2024 and didn't have to answer the phone once regarding tire purchases. That is our definition of success – a company that runs like a well-oiled machine, regardless of whether the boss is physically in the office on Al. Jerozolimskie or resting in Masuria.