Feeding the Dragon: Using Assets To Support an Uncertain Trucking Future

Summary: In the trucking industry, growth and risk often move in tandem, and using assets to fund expansion can drive opportunity or expose vulnerability. KSMTA’s David Roush shares lessons learned from bold acquisitions, shifting freight cycles, and tight capital markets, showing that sustainable success depends on knowing when to invest and when to protect what’s already built. 

As shared in my earlier article, Built, Broken, Rebuilt: A Trucker’s Story of Lessons and Resilience, my family’s trucking journey offers lessons worth revisiting, especially when growth and risk collide. This next chapter explores the lessons behind those experiences.

Every period of growth in trucking comes with a hungry companion – a dragon that demands to be fed. Sometimes it’s opportunity. Sometimes it’s ego. And sometimes, it’s the powerful belief that if we just push a little harder and risk a little more, we’ll come out the other side stronger than ever.

From 1980 to 2000, that dragon followed the Roush family everywhere. Those were years of transformation and turbulence in trucking. Deregulation had turned the industry upside down. Carriers were collapsing and rising almost overnight. Capacity was cheap, margins were thin, and everyone was chasing scale as the only real path to survival. My family believed we could build something different – something durable, something that would outlast the chaos.

Building the War Chest

After selling O.N.C. and its network of LTL terminals, our family invested the proceeds in commercial real estate. It was the kind of decision that felt safe and smart: stable assets with predictable returns. But by the mid-1990s, the freight market was shifting again. The cycle looked ready to turn, and we couldn’t ignore what we saw coming.

Every instinct told us that the next big winners in trucking would be those positioned to surge out of the recession with capacity, customers, and cash flow already in place. So, we decided to feed the dragon.

The Growth Run

We began acquiring carriers – companies that brought new lanes, customers, and terminal infrastructure. First came Altruk Freight Systems in Oldsmar, FL. After that came RTC in Forest Park, GA, then Donco Carriers in Oklahoma City, OK followed by Rising Fast Trucking in Batesville, AR. Next came TWX in Denver, CO, Joseph Land in Charleston, SC, Schreiber Foods’ private fleet in Green Bay, WI, Goodway in Harrisburg, PA, and many others we can barely remember today.

We even stepped beyond trucking into logistics technology, acquiring CTMS (Consolidated Traffic Management Systems), a pioneer in inbound freight routing for receivers. Looking back, that was ahead of its time, an early version of what would later be called managed transportation or supply chain visibility.

Each acquisition made sense on its own. Together, they created something ambitious, a network with national reach and integrated logistics capability. But collectively, they also created a beast that required constant feeding: more capital, more liquidity, more time.

When the Dragon Got Hungry

That’s when we made the hardest decision of our business lives. In hindsight, it was one of the most painful.

To keep fueling our growth, we began tapping into the family’s real estate portfolio. Properties that had once represented safety and long-term wealth were sold to generate operating capital. Others were pledged as collateral for loans to fund daily operations, acquisitions, and working capital. The strategy was logical on paper: use passive assets to power growth through the downturn and emerge from the recession as one of the industry’s dominant carriers.

And for a while, it worked. Freight demand improved, rates stabilized, and the company grew stronger. We believed our timing was perfect. But markets have a way of reminding you who’s in charge. When the cycle turned again, faster and harder than anyone expected, it exposed how thin our margin of safety had become.

Interest costs climbed. Lenders grew cautious. Cash flow evaporated under the weight of expansion. By the time our company ROCOR entered Chapter 11, nearly every piece of real estate we had owned was either sold or pledged. The dragon we’d fed so faithfully had burned through everything we had built.

What Time and Distance Have Taught Us

With distance and perspective, we don’t regret the vision, only the imbalance. We believed that investing when others were retreating would make us unstoppable when recovery came. And it might have, had timing and markets cooperated.

The truth is, the industry rewarded boldness back then. Carriers that grew through acquisition were celebrated as innovators. Playing it safe wasn’t part of the culture. Everyone believed they could outwork and outlast risk.

But trucking has a way of humbling even the most confident operators. Freight cycles shift. Credit tightens. Market confidence fades. And when family wealth, not just corporate capital, is tied to the same risk, the stakes aren’t just financial – they’re generational.

The Lesson I Learned

Today, I see echoes of that era in our current market: compressed margins, tight capital, and the constant pressure to innovate faster than cash flow allows. The temptation to bet big hasn’t changed. But the lesson has.

Feeding the dragon can lead to greatness, but only if you know when to pull back. Growth can build an empire, but preservation keeps you in the game long enough to build again.

If there’s one lesson from those years, it’s this: not every asset should serve the business. Some are meant to protect the people who built it. The art of leadership, and of survival, lies in knowing which is which.

To learn more or discuss any of the ideas shared above, please contact a KSMTA advisor via the form below.