Top 50 Global Transportation Providers

Special Report

COMMENTARY

By Paul Tonsager

C. H. Robinson’ s consistent focus on brokerage makes it a tougher competitor for rail.

For railroads and their intermodal partners, C. H. Robinson’ s acquisition of RXO for an implied $ 5.8 billion in cash and stock raises an important question: what happens to truck-torail conversion when the largest truck broker gets larger and better at pricing truck capacity?

Rail will find it harder to pull freight off the highway simply by being cheaper. A larger C. H. Robinson will compete more effectively for long-haul truckload freight, and rail will need to win more of that freight through dependable access to capacity and a commercial channel that reaches the shippers who control it.

C. H. Robinson expects about $ 300 million in annual cost synergies within two years of closing. It already works with approximately 450,000 contract carriers and manages about 37 million shipments a year. C. H. Robinson says RXO’ s data will improve the artificial intelligence it uses to match freight with carriers and buy transportation, and it expects the combination to improve margins in any freight market. Dave Bozeman deserves recognition for C. H. Robinson’ s performance since becoming CEO in mid-2023. The company reports productivity improvements of more than 60 % in its two main segments since the end of 2022, and its North American volume has outperformed the Cass Freight Shipment Index for 13 consecutive quarters through the second quarter of 2026.

Bozeman also been at the forefront of applying AI in freight, with more than 30 AI agents built largely in house that had automated more than 3 million shipping tasks by early 2026. Rail will be competing against that operating discipline. Other transportation executives should study how he got there, and when a Class I railroad next conducts a CEO search, Bozeman would be at the top of my list.

C. H. Robinson could use its reach with around 75,000 customers to build a much larger intermodal business. I do not expect it to, and I think that is the right decision. C. H. Robinson has consistently stayed focused on its core brokerage business, and that focus makes it a tougher competitor for rail.

Why conversion gets harder

Railroads largely sell domestic intermodal wholesale, and intermodal marketing companies typically decide lane by lane where rail can beat truck. C. H. Robinson prices across a network, using density and backhaul balance to bid on long-haul freight. Once the deal closes in the first half of 2027, it will have the lane history and contracted rates of both companies to work with.

The two channels also reach different customers. C. H. Robinson’ s top 100 customers account for about a third of its revenue. At Hub Group, Union Pacific’ s largest intermodal partner, the top 10 account for more than 40 %; at J. B. Hunt, BNSF’ s largest partner, the top 10 customers account for about a third of revenue. Intermodal has been built around large shippers, and a meaningful share of the long-haul freight that could still convert sits with smaller and midsize shippers that buy truck capacity through brokers.

The intermodal channel is also under some strain. STG Logistics named a new CEO Oct. 5, after a restructuring that cut its funded debt by about 90 %. Hub Group is appealing a Nasdaq delisting determination tied to delayed financial filings. Both developments illustrate a risk in the wholesale model, in which the railroad owns the network but the customer relationship sits with other companies.

In my time running intermodal at Coyote, two factors decided whether freight converted from truck to rail: rate and access to assets. As a non-asset provider, we could identify freight that should move by rail and price it competitively. A competitive rate without dependable access to rail capacity did not produce a sustainable intermodal product.

C. H. Robinson approaches the same freight from the truck side, with scale and carrier relationships that let it find capacity and price it quickly.

On the longest hauls, however, rail’ s linehaul cost advantage is structural, and better truck brokerage can only narrow it. Current conditions also favor rail as truck capacity leaves the market under tighter regulatory enforcement. The Supreme Court’ s May ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II adds cost to brokered trucking as well. Brokers can now face state law negligent-hiring claims over carrier selection, and C. H. Robinson was the defendant. That added cost partly offsets the pricing advantage C. H. Robinson gains from scale.

Part of that advantage is cyclical, and if truck rates moderate while C. H. Robinson is integrating RXO, some of the price gap that supports conversion could narrow.

email: paul. tonsager @ multimodalsolutions. io

30 Journal of Commerce | November 2, 2026 www. joc. com