Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
An annual ranking of the CEOs who are most admired by their own employees features leaders of the trucking line C.R. England Inc. and third party logistics provider (3PL) C.H. Robinson among a roundup that includes 100 of the world's largest companies.
Chad England, the CEO of Salt Lake City-based refrigerated transport provider C.R. England ranked #26 with a 95 percent approval rating, while John Wiehoff, the former head honcho at Minneapolis-based 3PL C.H. Robinson finished at #88 with 91 percent approval. Wiehoff stepped down from that position in May and was replaced by former COO Bob Biesterfeld.
Also on the list were the top executives of familiar supply chain industry names such as: Cathy Engelbert from consulting firm Deloitte (15), Bill McDermott from software vendor SAP AG (31), Tom Linebarger from engine manufacturer Cummins (32), Robert Sulentic from industrial real estate firm CBRE (39), and Lynne Doughtie from consulting firm KPMG (72).
Providing corporate leadership in the transportation sector comes with a unique set of challenges in contrast to other businesses because many employees are professional drivers who spend time hundreds or thousands of miles away from their support systems, England said in an email.
"I don't think people generally have a handle on the complexity of transportation and logistics," he said. "Aside from being extraordinarily competitive due to fragmentation, our industry requires sturdy process management, advanced technology, and the engagement of a wide variety of employees."
Truck driver shortages and the demand for great employees is also a huge challenge in the industry, he said. To solve that puzzle, England requires every executive at the firm to be trained, get their commercial driving license (CDL), and go out on the road periodically. According to England, that approach has helped improve driver retention rates, alongside other benefit changes like increasing pay, creating jobs that get drivers home frequently, and improving a variety of driver-related processes and policies.
Likewise, C.H. Robinson's Wiehoff applied a strategy of "servant leadership" throughout his career, where senior company leaders are obliged to make sure everyone else is successful, too, according to a profile of the executive provided by a C.H. Robinson spokesperson. "We congratulate John for being named a Glassdoor Top CEO," the spokesperson said in an email. "This honor is a testament to his outstanding 17-year tenure as the company's CEO. We are proud of his leadership, and look forward to Bob following in John's footsteps."
— (@)
The Glassdoor ranking is based on the input of employees who voluntarily provide anonymous feedback by completing a company review about their CEO's leadership, along with insights into their job, work environment, and employer over the past year, Glassdoor said. Across the approximately 900,000 employers reviewed on Glassdoor, the average CEO approval rating was 69 percent.
"Today's job seekers are looking for leaders who share their values and will empower them to bring their full selves to work," Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor's president and chief operating officer, said in a release. "More and more, we're seeing Top CEOs make decisions to shape the culture of their organizations to help recruit and retain quality talent, which has a direct correlation to fueling business success."
The full listings include entries from industries spanning technology, health care, finance, manufacturing, and retail. The ten Top CEOs in 2019 in the U.S. were:
Many AI deployments are getting stuck in the planning stages due to a lack of AI skills, governance issues, and insufficient resources, leading 61% of global businesses to scale back their AI investments, according to a study from the analytics and AI provider Qlik.
Philadelphia-based Qlik found a disconnect in the market where 88% of senior decision makers say they feel AI is absolutely essential or very important to achieving success. Despite that support, multiple factors are slowing down or totally blocking those AI projects: a lack of skills to develop AI [23%] or to roll out AI once it’s developed [22%], data governance challenges [23%], budget constraints [21%], and a lack of trusted data for AI to work with [21%].
The numbers come from a survey of 4,200 C-Suite executives and AI decision makers, revealing what is hindering AI progress globally and how to overcome these barriers.
Respondents also said that many stakeholders lack trust in AI technology generally, which holds those projects back. Over a third [37%] of AI decision makers say their senior managers lack trust in AI, 42% feel less senior employees don’t trust the technology., and a fifth [21%] believe their customers don’t trust AI either.
“Business leaders know the value of AI, but they face a multitude of barriers that prevent them from moving from proof of concept to value creating deployment of the technology,” James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer at Qlik, said in a release. “The first step to creating an AI strategy is to identify a clear use case, with defined goals and measures of success, and use this to identify the skills, resources and data needed to support it at scale. In doing so you start to build trust and win management buy-in to help you succeed.”
Many chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) are focused on reorganizing their supply chains in today’s business climate—but as they do so, they should be careful to avoid common pitfalls that can derail their efforts.
That’s according to recent research from Gartner that identifies critical organizational design mistakes that will prevent supply chain leaders from delivering on business goals.
“Supply chain reorganization is high up on CSCOs’ agendas, yet many are unclear about how organization design outcomes link to business goals,” according to Alan O'Keeffe, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice.
The research revealed that the most successful projects radically redesign supply chain structure based on distinct organizational needs “while prioritizing balance, strength, and speed as key business objectives.”
“Our findings reveal that the leaders who achieved success took a more radical approach to redesigning their supply chain organizations, resulting in the ability to deliver on new and transformational operating models,” O’Keefe said in a statement announcing the findings.
The research was based on a series of interviews with supply chain leaders as well as data gathered from Gartner clients. It revealed that successful organizations assigned responsibilities to reporting lines in radically diverse ways, and that they focused on the unique characteristics of their business to design supply chain organizations that were tailored to meet their needs.
“The commonality between successful organizations is that their leaders intentionally prioritized the organizational goals of balance, strength and speed into their design process,” said O’Keeffe. “In doing so, they sidestepped the most common pitfalls in supply chain reorganization design.”
The three most common errors, according to Gartner, are:
Mistake 1: The “either/or” approach
Unbalanced organizational structures result in delays, gaps in performance, and confusion about responsibility. This often stems from a binary choice between centralized and decentralized models. Such an approach limits design possibilities and can lead to organizational power struggles, with teams feeling overwhelmed and misaligned.
Successful CSCOs recognize balance as a critical outcome. They employ both integration (combining activities under one team structure) and differentiation (empowering multiple units to conduct activities in unique ways). This granular approach ensures that decisions, expertise, and resources are allocated optimally to serve diverse customer needs while maintaining internally coherent operating models.
Mistake 2: Debilitating headcount reduction
Reducing headcount as a primary goal of reorganization can undermine long-term organizational capability. This approach often leads to a focus on short-term cost savings at the expense of losing critical talent and expertise, which are essential for driving future success.
Instead, CSCOs should focus on understanding what capabilities will make the organization strong in the short, medium, and long term. They should also prioritize the development and leveraging of people capabilities, social networks, and autonomy. This approach not only enhances organizational effectiveness but also ensures that the organization is ready to meet future challenges.
Mistake 3: The copy/paste approach
Copying organizational designs from other companies without considering enterprise-specific variations can slow decision-making and hinder organizational effectiveness. Each organization has unique characteristics that must be factored into its design.
CSCOs who successfully redesign their organizations make speed an explicit outcome by assigning and clarifying authority and expertise to remove elements that slow decision-making speed. This involves:
Designing structures that enable rapid response to customer needs;
Streamlining internal decision-making processes;
And differentiating between operational execution and transformation efforts.
The research for the report was based in part on qualitative interviews conducted between February and June 2024 with supply chain leaders from organizations that had undergone organizational redesign, according to Gartner. Insights were drawn from those who had successfully completed a radical reorganization, defined as a shift that enabled organizations to deliver on new activities and operating models that better met the needs of the business. The researchers also drew on more than 1,200 inquiries with clients conducted between July 2022 and June 2024 for the report.
Like seaports everywhere, California’s Port of Oakland has long been planning for the impacts of rising sea levels caused by climate change. After all, as King Canute of medieval legend proved, no one has the power to hold back the tides.
But in Oakland’s case, port leaders have been looking beyond the hard-edged urban breakwater structures normally used for calming waves and rising waters. Instead, for the past five years, the port has been testing an artificial “island” that it describes as a prototype for an “ecologically productive” floating breakwater.
Known as the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab—or “Float Lab” for short—the island measures 10 by 15 feet and consists of a fiber-reinforced polymer structure. Float Lab arrived in Oakland in August 2019 and was installed in the port’s shallow water habitat adjacent to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.
Float Lab has now been moved from the Port of Oakland to the San Francisco Bay, where it will be anchored near Treasure Island, which is appropriately enough an artificial island itself. There, it will continue to host research efforts as ports keep a watchful eye on the changing climate.
When it comes to the challenges facing the trucking industry, the standard litany goes something like this: driver turnover, diesel prices … and freight scams.
Freight scams have always been there, of course. Thieves will naturally flock to a sector that handles 80,000-pound loads of merchandise conveniently packed into 18-wheelers that are sometimes left alone in a freight yard for the weekend or parked overnight along a lonely stretch of highway.
But the problem is getting worse, experts say. That’s partly because of the rise of the internet, where thieves can use keystrokes—rather than brute force—to divert freight. It has also opened the door to hackers, who can exploit human error to gain access to sensitive information—information they can then use to cripple a company’s networks or hold its databases for ransom.
Another factor in the upsurge of cargo scams is the increasing technological sophistication of the trucking industry. A few years ago, freight brokers spent their days phoning or emailing contacts they found on loadboards to book truck space—a process that was slow, but secure. Today, nearly anyone can book trucking capacity instantly through a digital freight matching (DFM) platform or smartphone app. While that approach is faster and more efficient, it also leaves users more vulnerable to online scammers.
“The biggest threat to the trucking industry isn’t from roads traveled or soft markets, but from cyberspace,” Joe Ohr, chief operating officer for the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA), said in a recent release. “With rapid tech adoption, vulnerabilities are growing,” he added, noting that today, one in four cybersecurity attacks target the transport and distribution industries. “It’s crucial for carriers, shippers, and 3PLs [third-party logistics service providers] to prioritize efficient and effective cybersecurity measures to mitigate these risks,” Ohr said.
According to the NMFTA, companies hit by recent cyberattacks include some of the biggest names in the business: Ward Transport & Logistics Corp., Bison Transport, Estes Express Lines, Forward Air Corp., Marten Transport, the Port of Los Angeles, and the Port of Seattle. The full list is almost certainly longer, but many victims do not disclose the breaches out of fear of damaging their reputations or inviting follow-on attempts.
BUILDING CYBERSHIELDS
With cyberattacks on the rise and billions of dollars at stake, the industry is fighting back.
For an example of that, you need look no further than the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the research arm of the American Trucking Associations. Noting that cargo theft is “a common and growing problem,” ATRI voted earlier this year to prioritize research on what it termed the “cargo theft crisis.” Theft has evolved from thieves simply stealing cargo to using sophisticated impersonation schemes, the group said, adding that FBI statistics indicate losses from cargo theft amount to $15 billion to $30 billion annually.
But collecting data for the study won’t be easy. Many industry stakeholders are hesitant to publicly provide cargo theft data, the group said. To encourage participation, ATRI designed its survey with confidentiality in mind—even offering to sign a confidentiality agreement if needed. The aim of the study, which was launched in August, is to determine the scope of the cargo theft problem and to identify successful counterstrategies used by both motor carriers and freight brokers.
“Cargo theft is a pervasive issue that won’t go away without a collaborative effort,” Ben Banks, an ATRI member and vice president of Nashville, Tennessee-based truckload and logistics service provider TCW, said in a release. “With accurate cargo theft data, our industry will be able to quantify the issue and work more effectively with law enforcement and commercial insurance to combat this costly problem.”
As the threat grows, government agencies are doing their bit to protect industry players as well. For instance, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently issued an alert to truckers advising them of a phishing scam. In the notice, the FMCSA warned that hackers had been posing as FMCSA agents and sending spoofed emails to registered freight entities. These emails direct recipients to fill out forms asking for personally identifiable information, such as their social security or driver’s license number, or the carrier’s USDOT PIN, which could be used to gain access to its FMCSA account, according to the bulletin. It went on to note that the agency does not require such information on official FMCSA forms and that legitimate information requests would direct users to log into their FMCSA portal accounts.
HIGH-TECH WEAPONS FOR HIGH-TECH THREATS
Technology firms are also building up their cyberdefense arsenals, developing increasingly sophisticated tools to help their customers detect scams. Here are three examples:
Loadboard operator Truckstop in September introduced a “Risk Assessment System” to guard against increasingly dynamic and digitally driven freight fraud. “Fraud in the freight industry evolves daily at a breakneck pace,” Julia Laurin, chief product officer at Truckstop, said in a release. “We are launching the Risk Assessment System to give our customers and network participants another practical tool that breaks the tension of protecting their business … . The solution leverages real-time data from Truckstop’s ecosystem to provide a proprietary view of fraud and business risks, using innovative technology to detect emerging fraud signals.”
In October, freight-tracking technology provider Trucker Tools introduced its “Fraud Toolkit,” a suite of fraud identification features designed to help freight brokers protect their operations against increasingly sophisticated threats.
“The freight industry is facing unprecedented challenges from bad actors who are constantly evolving their tactics,” Trucker Tools CEO Kendra Tucker said in a release. “With the rise in sophisticated fraudulent activities, freight brokers need tools to identify fraud quickly. We know that double brokering alone claims $500 million [to] $700 million from carriers and brokers annually. Our fraud identification tools help our customers combat this.”
This summer, transportation management software (TMS) developer Transport Pro announced that it had teamed up with Tive, a real-time logistics visibility service, to provide shipment tracking and monitoring in real time. Under the arrangement, Tive trackers are placed directly onto the cargo in a trailer, enabling Tive to monitor the cargo’s whereabouts at all times. Freight brokers can get real-time updates by checking their Transport Pro dashboard.
“Fraud and cargo theft have been a hot topic for the past few years. Freight tech providers have some great tools for vetting carriers, but there are still a lot of bad actors slipping through the cracks,” Kenneth Kloeppel, president and founder of Transport Pro, said in a release. “Fundamentally, tracking the actual cargo with a hardware device is the only way to keep an eye on the shipment.”
NO MAGIC BULLET
Freight fraud defense tools and widescale industry initiatives can take a big bite out of crime. But complete cyber-resilience may be nearly impossible to achieve, according to LevelBlue, a security service provider formerly known as AT&T Cybersecurity. That’s partly because the transportation industry is struggling to balance technological innovation with computer security: A recent report from the company shows that 73% of transportation respondents say the opportunity of dynamic computing innovation outweighs the corresponding increase in cybersecurity risk. And only 53% of transportation executives say that cybersecurity is included in their broader corporate strategy discussions.
But the C-suite may be forced to rectify the situation. “As digital innovation takes center stage, cyber-resilience will be crucial to earning and upholding stakeholder trust, “ said Theresa Lanowitz, chief evangelist of LevelBlue, in a release. And stakeholder pressure to step up security would be difficult to ignore.
In the interim, there are plenty of steps companies can take to mitigate the risks and keep cybercriminals at bay. And they won’t have to do it alone: Judging from the recent announcements, government agencies, industry associations, and tech developers all stand ready to help.
The number of shipments of mobile robots will rise from 547,000 units in 2023 to 2.79 million by 2030, as customers expand applications from the current typical use case in warehousing and logistics to new tasks in manufacturing, last-mile delivery, agriculture, and healthcare, according to a report from technology analyst firm ABI.
That steep expansion would add up to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.1% by units, and CAGR of 23.6% by revenue, as sales are forecasted to rise from $18 billion to $124 billion by 2030.
“Mobile robots are a very valuable category of robot which have completely transformed warehousing and logistics in recent years,” George Chowdhury, Robotics Industry Analyst at ABI Research, said in a release. “For material handling alone, mobile robots offer enterprises transformative efficiency improvements. Driven by the evolution of supporting technologies such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), mobile robots can be deployed in diverse and dynamic environments, presenting new horizons to stakeholders and bringing efficiency improvements to under-automated economic sectors such as agriculture and healthcare.”
While warehousing and logistics will remain the primary adopters, other market verticals will see accelerated uptake by the decade's end, the report said. Shipments catering for agriculture deployments will rise from 7,000 to 129,000 per year by 2030; shipments for delivery will grow from 14,000 to 147,000; and public-facing applications will increase as the use of mobile robots within restaurants progress from 6,000 in 2023 to 78,000 shipments in 2030.
According to ABI, that change will occur as other industries begin to benefit from the decreasing costs, greater versatility, and simplified programmability that vendors are bringing to the mobile robot market. Sorted by market, those vendors include MiR, Omron, Otto Motors, and ABB for intralogistics within manufacturing; companies such as Zebra, Locus, and Safelog for marketing; Simbe and Brain Corp for retail; and Starship for last-mile delivery market.
“Mobile robots will remain the most popular form of robot, and shipments will continue to increase across economies as the benefits of augmenting existing business practices with automation become clear to decision-makers,” Chowdhury said. “As trust in Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) technologies grows, we will increasingly see mobile robots in public spaces. Hospitals, agriculture, retail stores, and last-mile delivery are all nearing readiness for the mass adoption of mobile robots.”