Better Than Amazon? How Bradley Jacobs Turned A $63M Bet Into A $12 Billion Transportation Empire

Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Linkedin Dealmaker Brad Jacobs of XPO Logistics has built a $12 billion transportation empire. Jamel Toppin for Forbes Decades ago, Bradley Jacobs studied math and piano (classical and jazz) at Bennington and Brown before dropping out to make money. Now the balding 61-year-old CEO of XPO Logistics invokes that background to explain how he's parlayed sequential roll-ups in the gritty businesses of garbage collection, heavy equipment rentals and delivering stuff into a $2.6 billion net worth. "Anyone can buy a company. You just have to sign a contract and wire the money," he says. But conceiving how those acquired company parts can be integrated into an organically growing entity takes a special creative talent. "Even though I'm not writing a song [in integrating companies], I'm thinking of ideas that are abstract. It's a combination of math and music. I'm visualizing them as clearly as I possibly can in space and time and then actually executing...