Game Changer

CHAPTER 11The Custom Game: Making Sense of the Chaos

With contributions from Cesar Torres, Lionnel Bourgouin, and Steven Greene

When Chris Patterson took over as the CEO of Freightliner LLC in spring 2005, the market for medium‐ and heavy‐duty commercial trucks in the United States was experiencing a boom. That prompted him to make a surprising declaration, something that CEOs rarely say when times are good.

“Our pricing model is broken,” he told his team. “We can't keep pricing trucks the same way we have for decades.”

A veteran of 25 years in the North American trucking industry, Chris knew that Freightliner, which would later become Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA), needed to figure out how to maintain its strong share and margins when – not if – the bubble of the mid‐2000s burst.¹ He knew that DTNA would not only need the right equipment to remain competitive and profitable, but also required the right commercial strategy as a bulwark against whatever upheavals the inevitable downturn would cause.

The first event to trigger that downturn was already on the horizon and was already partly responsible for high demand: stricter regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set to take hold in 2007. Yet neither Chris nor any other executive could have known at the time that the Great Recession also lurked around the corner. It would cause the US market for ...