C.H. Robinson is a third-party logistics company, or 3PL, that connects businesses needing to ship goods with the carriers that move them. Rather than owning fleets of trucks, ships, or planes, C.H. Robinson acts as a middleman (known in the industry as a freight broker) that arranges transportation across nearly every mode of shipping. The company generated $16.2 billion in total revenues in 2025 and operates one of the largest freight networks in North America.
How Freight Brokerage Works
When a manufacturer, retailer, or distributor needs to move products from one place to another, they face a logistical puzzle: finding a reliable carrier, negotiating a fair rate, tracking the shipment, and handling paperwork. C.H. Robinson solves that puzzle. A shipper contacts C.H. Robinson with the details of what needs to move, and the company matches that load with a carrier from its network of more than 450,000 contract carriers.
C.H. Robinson doesn’t own the trucks or cargo ships. Instead, it earns revenue on the spread between what the shipper pays and what the carrier receives, plus fees for additional services. This “asset-light” model means the company can scale up or down without the overhead of maintaining vehicles, warehouses full of parts, or large driver payrolls. It also means shippers get access to a massive pool of carriers without having to build those relationships themselves.
Modes of Transportation
The company handles far more than standard trucking. C.H. Robinson arranges shipments across a wide range of transport types:
- Truckload: Full trailer loads, which is the company’s largest service. C.H. Robinson moves more truckload freight than any other company in the world.
- Less than truckload (LTL): Smaller shipments that share trailer space with other companies’ goods, useful when you don’t have enough cargo to fill an entire truck.
- Ocean freight: International container shipping. The company is one of the largest non-vessel-operating common carriers (NVOCCs) globally, meaning it books space on ocean vessels and resells it to shippers at negotiated rates.
- Air freight: Domestic and international air cargo for time-sensitive shipments.
- Intermodal: Combinations of rail and truck, which can reduce costs on long-distance routes.
- Last mile: Final delivery to a consumer’s home or business, including large-format items like furniture and appliances.
- Cross-border: Shipments between countries, with expertise in navigating customs and regulatory requirements at the border.
This range of options lets a single company handle a shipper’s entire transportation portfolio rather than forcing them to juggle separate providers for domestic trucking, international ocean freight, and local deliveries.
The Navisphere Technology Platform
Much of C.H. Robinson’s value comes from its technology. The company’s platform, called Navisphere, is a cloud-based transportation management system (TMS) used by roughly 83,000 shippers and 450,000 carriers worldwide. It serves as the digital backbone for booking, tracking, and optimizing shipments.
For shippers, Navisphere lets you quote and book freight across multiple modes in one place, whether you need a truckload rate from Dallas to Chicago or an ocean container from Shanghai to Los Angeles. The platform provides real-time tracking with predictive alerts, so you know where your shipment is and get notified if a delay is expected before it becomes a problem.
Navisphere also includes analytics tools that draw on what the company calls the largest dataset in the logistics industry. Shippers can benchmark their spending against market averages, monitor on-time delivery rates, track carbon emissions, and identify routes where they’re overspending. An optimization feature helps maximize trailer utilization by consolidating loads and reducing empty miles.
On the back-office side, Navisphere integrates with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and other transportation management systems, so shipment data flows automatically between a company’s internal systems and its carriers. This reduces manual data entry and the billing errors that come with it.
Customs and International Trade Services
For companies shipping goods across borders, C.H. Robinson provides customs brokerage, which is the process of filing import and export documentation with government agencies so goods clear customs without delays or penalties. The company employs more than 800 cross-border specialists and over 100 licensed customs brokers.
Their customs services cover the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand, with an agent network handling other regions. Beyond basic entry filings, the company offers trade policy consulting to help importers stay compliant with tariff rules and avoid fines. They also run duty drawback programs, which help companies recover duties paid on imported goods that are later exported, destroyed, or unused. For businesses that regularly import raw materials for manufacturing, these refunds can be substantial.
Managed Solutions and 4PL Services
Some companies don’t just need help booking individual shipments. They need someone to manage their entire supply chain strategy. C.H. Robinson’s managed solutions division fills this role, functioning as what the industry calls a fourth-party logistics provider, or 4PL.
The difference between a 3PL and a 4PL comes down to scope. A 3PL handles transportation execution: you give them a load, they move it. A 4PL takes a higher-level role, overseeing your full network of logistics providers (which might include multiple 3PLs, warehouses, and carriers), optimizing how goods flow through your supply chain, and continuously adjusting the strategy as market conditions shift.
In practice, this means C.H. Robinson’s managed solutions team might redesign a company’s distribution network, renegotiate carrier contracts across the board, implement the Navisphere platform as the company’s TMS, and then provide ongoing supply chain engineering to find new savings. The company positions this as a way to get logistics expertise without hiring a large in-house team. Their consulting includes network design, procurement strategy, and data-driven recommendations powered by their freight market data and generative AI tools.
Who Uses C.H. Robinson
The company’s customers span virtually every industry that ships physical goods: food and beverage, retail, manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, and consumer products. Small businesses might use C.H. Robinson to book a handful of truckloads per month when they don’t have the volume to negotiate carrier rates on their own. Large corporations might hand over management of thousands of monthly shipments across multiple countries.
On the carrier side, independent trucking companies and owner-operators use the platform to find loads that keep their trucks full. For a small trucking outfit that doesn’t have a sales team, C.H. Robinson provides a steady stream of freight opportunities without the carrier needing to find customers directly.
At its core, C.H. Robinson sits between the companies that need goods moved and the carriers that move them, using data, relationships, and technology to make those connections more efficient than either side could manage alone.