Join me on a short trip down memory lane?
In the spring of 2015, I was in a brand new job, only the second company of my professional career — leading efforts at The National Transportation Institute as its founder sought retirement. I’d spent the first 14 years of my career at a multi-platform truckload carrier in the Midwest, where I started as a recruiter fresh out of college and departed leading HR and Recruiting efforts in the spring of 2015 to join NTI. My goal – to allow fleets to pair actionable data with known deficits, and drive vital decision making.
In those first months at NTI, when my family and I would travel anywhere, even driving around town, I would write down names of the trucking companies and private fleets stamped on the sides of trucks and trailers. And I’d send those notes around to our team at NTI as a list of the companies we weren’t working with but should be.
Fast forward to today, 10 years later, and the opposite is true: I’m hard-pressed to see a truck drive by with a company name that I’m not familiar with or that we haven’t had an impact of service on. The same is true for my team, too — whether we’re circulating pictures of NTI’s Top Pay Company seals spotted in the wild or simply waving at the drivers in trucks of the companies we do business with, we all take so much pride and gratitude in the ability to have such a widespread impact at so many amazing companies in our industry.
That sums up why I joined NTI in the first place — and why I still have so much passion and gratitude every single morning I get to my office. Ten years ago, I knew I had a whole lot more to offer the industry than I could working for a single fleet. Since then and through today, leading NTI, I interface with talent acquisition and recruiting managers, HR and finance leaders, operations VPs, CEOs, and of course professional drivers and diesel technicians from all over North America.
Using our powerful data at NTI and our team’s decades of experience in trucking, we all have the amazing opportunity every single day to work with YOU and YOUR team to help guide decisions to accomplish your goals, make your work more impactful and meaningful, and to support companies big and small of all types and stripes in your efforts to effectively engage with your people and recruit and retain the drivers and techs you need to propel your fleet.
Those tenets are why I am so humbled and excited to announce that 2025 marks a significant milestone for The National Transportation Institute: Founded in 1995, NTI this year is celebrating 30 years of growth, innovation, dedication, and service to the greatest industry in America and the hard-working professionals across trucking who keep our society moving and thriving.
As the only reliable source for wage data and benchmarking analysis in trucking, NTI’s work of supporting critical compensation decisions at companies where professional drivers and diesel technicians are vital to success has spanned three decades of rapid change and dramatic evolution in trucking, of the driving job, of fleets’ relationships and engagement with their drivers, and, of course, compensation programs focused around fleets’ goals of recruiting and retaining the drivers they need to operate profitably.
We started as a company that compiled mileage rates for over-the-road drivers. At the time, that was the predominant pay package and really the only attribute the industry prioritized in benchmarking. However, since those first surveys in 1995, the industry’s jobs, pay structures and attributes, incentives and components, and recruiting and retention marketing have evolved on an exponential curve. Our team at NTI has stayed focused on evolving with those changes to provide surveys, pay benchmarking data, resources, tools, and expert guidance that are relevant to and support your fleet and your needs — no matter what shape your driver jobs take, how you structure your comp programs, or the nuances of your fleet’s operations.
From those humble beginnings tracking mileage pay and faxing reports to subscribers, we now provide a suite of surveys and subscriptions built around modern analytics tools so you’re armed with the data you need to communicate internally with leadership and decision makers, with your sales and operations teams, with recruiting marketing, and with your customers.
Thirty years is simultaneously a long time and a short time. 1995 doesn’t seem so long ago, and many of us remember it well. But for our industry and the way we pay our people, recruit them, communicate with them, and engage with them — it’s been 30 years of immense and dramatic change.
Across these three decades, NTI has become entrenched as the industry’s sole authority on driver pay data, trends, and benchmarking, and an invaluable resource for the industry’s top motor carriers, household-name Fortune 500 companies, innovative and award-winning private fleets and 3PLs, and thousands of other fleets of all types and sizes who’ve leaned on NTI data and support their compensation, recruiting, and retention programs.
Throughout 2025, we’ll be telling that story and much more by celebrating NTI’s 30th anniversary across our channels and platforms.
What’s our 30th celebration all about?
For starters – you! The trucking companies, private fleets, 3PLs, shippers, analysts, partners, and vendors, and all of the people our company and our team work with day in and day out — the recruiters, HR leaders, operations pros, fleet managers, marketing teams, compensation analysts, and executives that pour into their companies every day to support their drivers’ goals of safely delivering every load.
Secondly, a look back at the dramatic shifts in the driving job, our industry, technology, consumerism, e-commerce, the economy, and communications — and the evolution of how NTI surveys, analyzes, publishes, and reports data to support fleets through these ongoing changes and to provide what they need to make their driver programs thrive.
Our 30th anniversary celebration will key in on how today’s trends will continue to drive evolution in pay and benchmarking tomorrow. NTI’s story began in 1995 with one person conducting surveys over the phone and then sending benchmarking reports to subscribers via fax or snail mail. Since then, we’ve grown into a robust consulting company with a suite of actionable solutions, accurate driver pay benchmarking surveys by job type, location, segment, and so much more, combined with expert guidance from our team to drive meaningful results at companies just like yours.
That story arc continues unfolding every year in ongoing partnerships with fleets as we listen and understand how we can continue to grow and enhance the ways we support you.
We invite you to join us for this journey — and to share your NTI stories as we go.
