Annual Report 2024
1
C.H. Robinson Annual Report 2024
Fellow
shareholders
We are on a journey to transform C.H. Robinson
by raising the bar for ourselves and the logistics
industry. After charting our path forward in 2023
to get Fit, Fast, and Focused, I challenged our
organization to evolve from a culture of problem
admiration to problem solving. To enable this, we
began implementing a new operating model in
January 2024 that is rooted in Lean methodology
and aimed at creating a higher and more consistent
level of execution.
2
We implemented a regular cadence of scorecard reviews
that measure critical inputs to the strategies for our
enterprise, divisions, and functional support areas. We now
look at input metrics on a more frequent basis, and this
allows us to drive faster problem solving in an industry
where time is critical rather than conducting an industrial
autopsy based on output metrics. Our reviews are focused
on prosecuting the business rather than the people and
identifying, attacking, and solving problems with a greater
sense of urgency and speed.
I’m proud of how our people are embracing these changes.
Since putting the Robinson operating model in place,
we’re getting more comfortable with being vocally
self-critical and driving transparency and accountability,
making decisions faster and taking quick action on
counter measures to improve our performance.
While we are still in the early stages of our transformation,
the operating model is helping us execute a solid strategy
even better, and we expect further improvement as we
continue to cascade the model and problem-solving tools
deeper into the organization and build operational muscle.
Our expert logisticians are embracing the discipline needed
to generate higher highs and higher lows across market
cycles, resulting in a higher quality of volume, greater
productivity, and an expansion of our gross profit and
operating profit margins.
2024 Business Results
The prolonged North American freight recession that
began in the middle of 2022 continued throughout 2024,
with soft freight demand, excess carrier capacity, and
suppressed freight rates. Although carrier capacity has
exited the market, it has been at rates much slower than
is typically seen at this stage of the market cycle.
Conversely, the global forwarding market experienced
significant volatility in 2024. Most ocean carriers avoided
the Suez Canal for the majority of 2024 due to the Red Sea
conflict, which caused vessel re-routing, increased transit
times, and strained global carrier capacity. Consequently,
ocean freight rates were elevated compared to the
prior year.
Within this environment, we have remained focused
on what we can control. Disciplined pricing and capacity
procurement efforts from the C.H. Robinson team and
volume growth in Global Forwarding resulted in a 6%
improvement in our adjusted gross profits. The disciplined
execution enabled by our operating model and a
continued focus on removing waste and manual touches
from our processes led to productivity improvements in
both North America Surface Transportation (NAST) and
Global Forwarding of 30% or more over a two-year
period. Within 2024, both divisions increased their
overall volume and market share while reducing costs.
This increased our operating leverage and resulted
in a 30% year-over-year improvement in income from
operations and a 42% increase in diluted earnings
per share.
We also continued to provide differentiated service to
our customers and carriers, and they continue to value
the quality, stability, and reliability that we provide, as
well as our financial strength that enables us to invest
through cycles in value-added solutions. As we continue
to improve the customer and carrier experience and our
cost to serve, we’re focused on ensuring that we’re well
positioned for the eventual freight market rebound, with
a disciplined operating model that drives growth and
additional operating leverage.
3
C.H. Robinson Annual Report 2024
Logistics
like no
one else
TM
4
Enabling the Next Era of Profitable Growth
As we shared at our Investor Day in December, we are disrupting from within to deliver on
our key strategies to drive incremental operating income through market share growth and
expansion of our gross profit and operating margins. While we made noteworthy progress
on these fronts in 2024, there is more runway for improvement.
We expect to continue growing market share by reclaiming share in targeted market
segments and by leveraging our robust capabilities to power value-added services and
solutions for customers and carriers that drive new volume to our four core modes—North
American truckload and less than truckload (LTL) and global ocean and air—and expand
our addressable market. Our combination of unmatched expertise, unrivaled scale,
and tailored solutions enables us to deliver an exceptional customer experience and
a compelling value proposition and provides a unique right to win.
We’re also setting a new bar for the industry with our digital platform that leverages
proven patterns and techniques from digital consumer platforms. As we lead the industry
into an era of digital enablement, we’re leveraging our scale and resulting information
advantage to fuel our powerful AI and machine learning technology. With continued
innovation in our digital brokerage and dynamic pricing and costing capabilities, we’re
responding surgically and faster than ever to dynamic market conditions by performing
more frequent price discovery and enhancing the quality of the pricing that we deliver.
This is resulting in improved gross profit margins across our portfolio, and we expect
to make further progress on optimizing our yield.
We continue to automate tasks across the quote-to-cash lifecycle of an order, including
quoting, order entry, load tenders, appointment scheduling, and other manual tasks.
This enables us to reduce our response times and provide a better and more uniform
experience for our customers and carriers. It also creates business model scalability,
thereby enabling us to decouple headcount growth from volume growth and create
greater operating leverage.
While we’re using generative AI and other innovations to automate operational tasks,
we are also leaning into the strength of our people in customer and carrier-facing roles.
Our people have deep logistics expertise and longstanding relationships with our customers
and carriers. By arming our talented people with innovative tools, we’re enabling them
to spend more time on exception management, relationship management, and
value-added solutioning.
We will continue to leverage our team’s expertise to set the bar for our industry, for our
customers and for our carriers, to adapt to meet the evolving needs of the future, and to
reassert our industry leadership. We will win for customers, carriers, and employees, which
we expect will translate to sustainable and profitable growth for our shareholders.
On behalf of the senior leadership team and our Board of Directors, I would like to thank
you for your continued trust and support. We appreciate your partnership, and we look
forward to sharing our continued progress with you in the next year.
Sincerely,
Dave Bozeman
President and Chief Executive Officer
5
C.H. Robinson Annual Report 2024
*Adjusted gross profits is calculated as gross profit excluding amortization
of internally developed software utilized to directly serve our customers
and contracted carriers. For additional information, see Item 7 of Part II,
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial. Condition and Results
of Operations in our Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Income from Operations
$669,141
$514,607 +30.0%
Cash Returned to Shareholders
$326,989
70% of Net Income
Net Income
$465,690
$325,129 +43.2%
Dividends per Share
$2.46
$2.44 +0.8%
Diluted EPS
$3.86
$2.72 +41.9%
Return on Average
Stockholders’ Investment
29.7%
2024 Net Income/Average
Stockholders’ Equity
Financial Highlights
Adjusted Gross
Profit Margin
15.6%
14.8% +80 bp
Total Revenues
$17,724,956
$17,596,443 +0.7%
Adjusted Gross Profits*
$2,765,014
$2,604,608 +6.2%
(dollars in thousands, except per share data)
Legend
2024
2023
6
Key Metrics
NAST
Global
Forwarding
All Other
Adjusted Gross Profits
$1,641,195
Income from Operations
$531,292
Largest Truckload
Network in
North America
Largest LTL 3PL
in the U.S.
Adjusted Gross Profits
$802,549
Income from Operations
$212,476
Ocean
1.38 Million TEUs
Moved in 2024
#1 NVOCC from
India to U.S.
#1 NVOCC from
U.S. to Oceania
#3 NVOCC for
Global U.S. Imports
Adjusted Gross Profits
$321,270
Robinson Fresh®
One of the largest
providers of fresh
produce and floral
end-to-end supply
chain solutions in the
grocery, retail, and
foodservice industry
C.H. Robinson Managed Solutions™
$6 Billion in Freight
Under Management
83,000
Active Customers
450,000
Contract Carriers on Our Platform
14,000
Employees Worldwide
(dollars in thousands)
2024 Gross Revenues by Customer Industry
8%
7%
16%
25%
Industrial/Manufacturing
21%
Retail
Auto
18%
Food & Beverage
Chem
Other
2024 Truckload Shipments by Carrier Size
73%
17%
9%
< 100 Trucks
100–400 Trucks
> 400
Trucks
6%
Health
18%
C.H. Robinson Annual Report 2024
Together,
we keep the world
moving forward.
Every shipment.
Every challenge.
Every day.
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