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C.H. Robinson: Hires Ford Exec as New CEO in Surprising Move

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Freight brokerage giant C.H. Robinson Worldwide CHRW announced that it has hired Ford’s vice president of customer service and enthusiast brands, Dave Bozeman, as its new chief executive. Robinson had fired Bob Biesterfeld as CEO in December, calling it an involuntary termination without cause. His departure was probably the result of pressure from activist investor Ancora, which we understand has been pushing for more rapid strategic changes amid slowing freight demand, particularly for the global air and ocean forwarding operations.

We haven’t been under the impression that Robinson’s execution has materially deteriorated in recent years, even amid the trucking and logistics industry’s current pullback/normalization phase. Generally speaking, we think the firm has performed reasonably well in terms of managing ubiquitous competitive intrusions into the truck brokerage industry (including digital startups) along with several freight minicycles over the past decade.

Overall, we are a bit surprised by Bozeman’s hiring, as there was speculation that former UPS COO Jim Barber was in the running. Barber appeared to us to be an ideal choice, since he is a respected transportation industry veteran and was appointed to Robinson’s board in late 2022. However, before Ford, Bozeman spent about five years as vice president of Amazon’s transportation services division, which points to some familiarity with the truck brokerage and global air and ocean forwarding industries along with the broader trucking landscape. Before Amazon, he was senior vice president of enterprise systems at Caterpillar, overseeing the global manufacturing of mining products.

The stock is down about 6% since June 2, before unconfirmed reports of the hire hit the headlines. We maintain our $95 discounted cash flow-derived fair value estimate for C.H. Robinson and consider the shares to be appropriately valued relative to our longer-term free cash flow growth forecasts.

The author or authors do not own shares in any securities mentioned in this article. Find out about Morningstar’s editorial policies.

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