LEADERSHIP Conversations with the Captains of Industry
Building Solutions and Relationships
Drew Wilkerson graduated from college with no speci c job in mind. But he knew how he hoped to spend his career. “I wanted to work with people and have the ability to create solutions and build strong relationships,” he says. At the suggestion of a friend who worked there, Wilkerson visited third-party logistics company C.H. Robinson. “I spent a day with the teams, and I was hooked,” he says. From a series of positions at Robinson, Wilkerson moved on to XPO Logistics, eventually rising to the role of president, North American transportation. In 2022, XPO spun off its technology-enabled brokerage business to form RXO, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. It chose Wilkerson to lead the new company. We talked with Wilkerson about his rise to the CEO’s of ce and his current focus at RXO.
Drew Wilkerson CEO, RXO
IL: Since the formation of RXO, what have been your top initiatives?
We want to take market share. To do that, we have to focus on giving customers great service from Point A to Point B , with good communication throughout the life cycle of an order. We have to create solutions for them, using our technology and data to run their transportation networks more ef ciently. There has to be innovation. And we need to have really good relationships with our customers. Our top customers have been with us for 16 years on average. They don’t just come back and renew the business we’ve done with them the previous years. In most cases, they reward us with more freight, because of the service and solution innovations we’ve brought them. IL: What’s an unusual challenge you took on for a customer? In 2021, the ports—especially on the West Coast—were so backed up, they sometimes had more than 100 ships waiting to get in. Obviously, that delayed our customers’ inbound shipments. So as soon as their product hit the port, we sent drayage trucks to pick up the freight and take it to our facility, where we transloaded it. From there, we gave our customers options, based on what worked best for their networks—LTL shipments, truckload, intermodal. Were they looking to get products to consumers as fast as possible? Were they looking for the best price? By
Through innovation, valuable internal and external relationships, quality service, and technology, Drew Wilkerson helps keep customer supply chains moving, even during tough times.
by Merrill Douglas
20 Inbound Logistics • July 2024
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