Bradley S. Jacobs

In 1979, Jacobs co-founded Amerex Oil Associates Inc., an oil brokerage firm with offices in New Jersey, Houston, London, and Tokyo.[5][10][11] He served as Amerex's chief executive officer until the firm was sold in 1983. During that time, the company's annual gross contract volume had grown to approximately $4.7 billion.[5]

In 1984, Jacobs moved to London and founded Hamilton Resources (UK) Ltd., an oil trading company.[6] In founding the company, Jacobs had used the bulk of his savings and a $1 billion line of credit from Banque Paribas.[11] He grew Hamilton to approximately $1 billion in annual revenue.[6]

In 1989, Jacobs founded United Waste Systems in Greenwich, Connecticut, and began consolidating small garbage collectors that had overlapping routes in rural areas.[10] Jacobs served as chairman and chief executive officer,[12] and in 1992 he took the company public. In August 1997, after the company had made more than 200 acquisitions,[13] Jacobs sold United Waste Systems to USA Waste Services Inc. (now known as Waste Management, Inc.) for $2.5 billion.[11][14][15] When it was sold, United Waste Systems was the fifth-largest solid waste management company in North America, and its stock had outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 5.6 times since its IPO.[5][14][16]

In September 1997, Jacobs formed United Rentals,[10][14] serving as the new company's chairman and chief executive officer. Jacobs grew United Rentals through a strategy of consolidating equipment rental dealers in North America.[12][17][18] Jacobs formed the company in September 1997 and went public three months later (NYSE: URI).[19][20][10] In the 10 years that Jacobs led the company (1997-2007), he led more than 250 acquisitions and United Rentals outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 2.2 times.[21][22][23] In 2007, Fortune Magazine ranked United Rentals as the 536th largest public corporation in America, with $3.9 billion in revenue and 690 locations.[24][5]

In 2011, Jacobs invested approximately $150 million in Express-1 Expedited Solutions, a third-party logistics and transportation service provider trading at the time as AMEX:XPO.[11] He assumed the roles of chairman of the board and chief executive officer,[25][26] gained ownership of approximately 71 percent of the company,[13] and renamed it XPO Logistics.[27] Jacobs listed the company on the New York Stock Exchange, retaining the ticker symbol (NYSE:XPO).[28]

In February 2012, Jacobs announced plans to grow XPO's revenue from $175 million to $5 billion within five years through M&A.[29] By the end of 2016, he had spearheaded 17 acquisitions and turned XPO into a $15 billion global company.[30] XPO reported revenue of $16.65 billion in 2019.[31]

In May 2018, he was ranked 10th on Barron's list of the World's Best CEOs,[32] while in June Jacobs was listed 7th on Glassdoor's Top CEOs of 2018 list in France,[33] and 20th in the UK.[34]