Chief Executive Officer & Director, RXO INC
Announcing RXO - Spinoff of XPO
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About Drew Wilkerson
Drew Wilkerson, chairman and CEO of RXO, has been addressing the state of the freight market and the role of artificial intelligence in the logistics industry. In February 2026, he stated that the business is about "scale, relationships, and service," and argued that AI is a tool, not a threat to the traditional brokerage model. He noted that RXO's top customers have been with the company for over 16 years on average. Wilkerson described the current freight market as "soft," with demand still below 2019 levels, but pointed to a "structural change" in capacity due to the exit of non-domicile drivers and English language proficiency requirements, which he called the largest structural change he has seen in 20 years. He also cited optimism from the ISM report and home building trends, noting that each new home built generates eight truckload shipments. Wilkerson has emphasized RXO's growth in less-than-truckload (LTL) volumes, which increased 45% year-over-year, and its last-mile delivery business, which grew 17%. He attributed this growth to existing customers adopting the RXO Connect technology platform. Regarding tariffs, Wilkerson said customers are "searching for clarity" and are in the early stages of formulating plans. He also highlighted the company's acquisition of Coyote Logistics, which he described as a strategic move to position RXO for a market upturn. Wilkerson has stated that the company focuses on organic growth and that its technology platform, which uses AI and machine learning, helps improve employee productivity and customer service.
Transcript (15 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
K
Kaylee0:00
But first, we've got some big news coming out of XPO this week, and to talk about it, we've got CEO of new spinoff RXO, Drew Wilkerson, with us. Drew, thank you for joining us, and we're very excited to hear what's coming out of the company. It's been a huge year of announcements for XPO, and this one just keeps it on rolling.
D
Drew Wilkerson0:17
Thank you, Kaylee. It's great to be here. We are super excited about RXO, which stands for reliability multiplied by outperformance. We've got a history of creating reliability with our customers, with the carriers that we're working with every day, as well as the employees who have a great atmosphere and a winning team that they get to come to work with each day. That's allowed us to have outperformance over the last eight years. Our tech-enabled truck brokerage platform has grown at nearly three times what the brokerage industry has grown at over the last eight years, and we're more excited about the next eight years because of the investments that we've made in technology, the relationships that we have with our customers, and the solutions that we're able to create for them.
K
Kaylee1:06
Andrew, tell us what is exactly driving this growth here.
D
Drew Wilkerson1:11
Our technology is driving a lot of the growth. When you look at what we're able to do for customers, you go back to the early days of how we started off. When we built our technology from the ground up over 10 years ago, we focused on three things: customers, carriers, and employees. For customers, what we wanted to do was be able to give them leading market indicators that would help them run their business—things like what day of the week they should ship something, what mode of transportation they should use, should you transload something, do you have the opportunity to consolidate your freight. We've even done things like helping shippers decide where they're going to put their warehouse that would create the most transportation efficiency within their network. Our technology allows us to continue to go out and create solutions and move the ball forward for our customers. They don't just come back to us year after year; they come back to us and offer us more freight year after year.
K
Kaylee2:10
So Drew, as I mentioned, you guys have made a ton of announcements for growth as far as XPO as a whole company this year. You have the spin-off of the brokerage segment, you mentioned the spin-off of the intermodal. CEO Brad Jacobs has talked about becoming just this pure-play logistics provider and that really being the important factor for the growth of XPO as a whole company. A lot of companies have taken the other strategy and said, you know what, let's diversify, let's go into all these different places, and that's the opposite of what you guys are doing. Do you think that this is a unique strategy in the industry and one that really sets apart XPO and now all the different spin-off arms of it? And is RXO going to capitalize on that momentum of being just laser-focused on one thing?
D
Drew Wilkerson2:55
You're absolutely right, Kaylee. We're going to be laser-focused on being able to grow our tech-enabled truck brokerage platform. We'll have an entire management team that will continue to go out and look at how we can create share. We are the fourth-largest truckload broker in the country today, and we've got a lot of tailwinds with the technology that we've got, the relationships that we have with our customers—our top 20 customers have been with us for 13 years on average—and then we've got a great team. If you look at vice president level and above, they've been with us for over 12 years on average; director level and above have been with us for eight years on average. So to have all of those resources focused on the growth of RXO is going to make for a great next decade for us.
K
Kaylee3:44
You mentioned having customers for 15, 20 years. You mentioned having leadership in there for a long time as well. It seems like that might be the company motto to grow together, and it seems like that's something that RXO is going to be bringing as well. I'm curious if this is going to strengthen more of those relationships in the future.
D
Drew Wilkerson4:06
It's absolutely going to strengthen more of the relationships in the future, and it does start with our team. We've got a very cohesive team that has worked together for a long time to achieve these outsized results that we've referenced. When you look at the relationships on the customer side, we've got to be able to do a couple of things. One, we hit on the technology side already, and we've got to continue to innovate for our customers with technology. But we also have to be flexible and offer them massive amounts of capacity and do things like drop trailers. Over 10 percent of our business is drop trailer business. That's something that was typically held by asset-based carriers, but it's something where our brokerage team has been able to go out and take share.
K
Kaylee4:50
So Drew, we talked a little bit about the way that XPO is changing as a company now, RXO spinning off, but I want to get into kind of your leadership journey and your journey to become CEO of RXO. Can you tell us a little bit about how your journey at XPO kind of went and where it led you to become now CEO of the spin-off? And how are you going to take those lessons—what lessons are you going to take from working in XPO until you now lead the spin-off?
D
Drew Wilkerson5:14
Yeah, absolutely, thank you. I came to XPO over a decade ago from C.H. Robinson, where I started out on the desk level. I've worked on the carrier side, the customer side, and the sales side. At XPO, I've always had P&L responsibility. When Brad first did the acquisition, the very first brokerage acquisition he did was a company called Continental Freight, and he hired me in to run the few offices in the Carolinas. I just continued to grow my responsibility over time to where I eventually oversaw all of our brokerage operations. Then the last couple of years, I've been fortunate enough to lead a great team that is led by our tech-enabled truck brokerage platform but is complemented by our managed transportation business, our global forwarding business, and our last mile. The one thing that I have learned early on in my career is it's all about the people. What we've done is we've taken the best technologists, not just in transportation but the best technologists in the world, and we partnered them with some of the great operators and great sales folks that we've got to be able to create unique solutions for our customers.
K
Kaylee6:28
And I'm curious what you think is the biggest opportunity for a brokerage in today's market.
D
Drew Wilkerson6:36
Well, the outsourcing trend is something that has been going on for a number of years. Go back to whenever I started in this industry 15-plus years ago, and brokers held about 10 percent share of the for-hire trucking market. Today, it's over 22 percent and is continuing to grow. There's a simple reason for the growth: it's because of the access to massive, flexible capacity that large-scale brokers can offer. The second thing that I would say is technology and the visibility that we can bring to the customer side. And the third piece would be solutions. Whether it is going out and creating transload solutions, whether it's creating drop trailer solutions, go-anywhere rates, backstop rates—being able to create those solutions is going to allow us to continue to grow and take share. As I mentioned, RXO has grown nearly three times what the brokerage industry has grown over the last eight years.
K
Kaylee7:34
So Drew, last question for you to kind of wrap things up. As CEO stepping into this leadership, if you had to put one goal on the spin-off for RXO, what would be that number one goal that you would be like, this is our top level, this is what we want to hit?
D
Drew Wilkerson7:47
One, we want to continue to go out and serve our customers, and by doing that, we want to outperform the market. We've got a great piece going with our technology, we've got the best people in the transportation business today, and we're looking forward to going out and creating new solutions for our customers. It's an exciting time as we get closer to the fourth quarter with the spin-off.
K
Kaylee8:10
Exciting indeed. Thank you so much for joining us today. Great to see what you guys are doing at XPO as a whole entire company and with each and every one of the spin-offs. We'll be watching to see how that performs coming up as we move closer towards the end of the year. Right now, we're going to go back and take our next look at what's making top stories today up on FreightWaves.com.