Always Moving Forward

How It Grew

In 1905, Charles Robinson partnered with Fred Parks Nash and Willis King Nash to start a produce brokerage firm in Grand Forks. C. H. Robinson Company moved its headquarters to Minneapolis in 1919. From 1905 to 1980, pretty much all the company did was buy, sell, and arrange the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables. (The Nash brothers also cofounded grocery wholesaler Nash Finch, now headquartered in Edina. Nash Finch owned C. H. Robinson stock until 1976, when Robinson employees bought it out.)

In 1935, Congress gave the federal Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the authority to regulate interstate truck companies, with powers similar to those that the ICC had had over railroads since 1887. The ICC could decide which companies could become motor carriers, what services they could offer, and what rates they could charge. But trucks transporting agricultural products were exempted. This allowed C. H. Robinson to use any carrier it wished, and move produce across the country more freely. “Produce could go on any truck from point to point,” Wiehoff says.

The company’s skill in handling shipments of perishable products led it to become an importer—for instance, it has been importing grapes and other products from South America since the 1920s. The relationships that it established in South America would later serve it well as it pursued new types of business.

Then in 1980, Congress overturned much of the 1935 regulations, substantially reducing federal motor carrier regulation in an attempt to promote competition. In essence, carriers could now negotiate rates with shippers that were lower than the ICC’s “reasonable” rates. Before the legislation’s passage, the industry had passed higher wage and operating costs on to shippers. Price competition helped create greater efficiencies.

“You could start to manage transportation, logistics, and supply chains on a much more real-time, aggressive basis for all commodities, just like you could [with] produce prior to that,” Wiehoff says. For C. H. Robinson, that meant that the company could expand beyond the produce transport market to arrange the movement of other consumables—dry beans, pickles, whey powder, beer. In time, the company was arranging shipments of nonfood products like glass, electronics, and machinery.

In the ’80s, to beef up its expanding capabilities, C. H. Robinson began to invest heavily in technology; by the ’90s, it started opening offices overseas to accommodate existing customers and then to find new ones. It now has 221 branch offices across four continents.