C.H. Robinson CEO Strives for Impactful Changes

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Dave Bozeman had the choice of living anywhere when he was hired as chief executive of C.H. Robinson.

Several leaders of Minnesota-based companies live elsewhere, so he could have stayed in Michigan where he was at the time or returned to his hometown of Chicago where C.H. Robinson has a large regional operation.

He chose the Twin Cities. He, of course, had input from his wife, Dawn, and the youngest of their five children, who is still in school, since the family likes to entrench themselves in civic life wherever they live.

But it also came down to being where the action is for C.H. Robinson, which ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America. He was hired to turn around an unsettled company at a time when supply chains are constantly changing and digital-only providers are intent on disrupting the fragmented industry.

Bozeman said of the company culture: “I saw people. And this was probably the most important thing that they really love and cared about this company, and they just simply wanted to win.” (C.H. Robinson Worldwide)

“If I’m going to go in there and do the things that I like to do — that’s improving companies, driving performance, developing people, and really going up and to the right … I can’t do that remotely,” Bozeman said. ”I have to be where the headquarters are.”

At the time, the company was under pressure from an activist investor — one that had helped to push out the previous CEO and was pressing the Eden Prairie-based Fortune 500 company to improve efficiency and divest its global freight forwarding business in order to concentrate on the company’s strength in the North American trucking market.

Once he moved to the area in June 2023, he dug right in with a deep dive into the company to try to understand why.

This is Bozeman’s first job as a CEO, but he’s no stranger to leadership roles. He came to C.H. Robinson from the Ford Motor Co., where he was vice president of the customer service division. He …