Schneider turns to homegrown CEO Jim Filter for its next era

On July 1, Filter became Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider’s top executive. (Schneider)

When Jim Filter joined Schneider 28 years ago, it didn’t take long for him to realize he wanted to spend decades at the carrier.

But back then, he never envisioned becoming CEO.

On July 1, Filter became Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider’s top executive. The Wisconsin native is the fifth CEO of the company founded by Al Schneider in 1935 and the first Wisconsinite to hold the post since Don Schneider followed in his father’s footsteps.

Filter replaced Mark Rourke, who held the CEO post since 2019, and will become executive chairman of the board. The transition was announced in January.

A former Marine Corps helicopter mechanic, Filter started out at Schneider as a maintenance team leader in Green Bay. He then moved to Detroit, where he met his wife, Maria, who also worked for Schneider.

Over the next couple of decades, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay alumnus Filter worked his way up the ranks, including time spent heading the company’s Mexican operations.

The Filter family moved back to Green Bay in 2012. At the time, the CEO was Chris Lofgren, the company’s first chief executive whose family name was not Schneider.

Lofgren — formerly the chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors — is the Filters’ next-door neighbor.

Schneider went public under Lofgren in 2017. At that time, Filter was head of the company’s intermodal division.

But it is the truckload division that has seen the largest change since Schneider went public. In 2017, some 70% of its truckload business was network and 30% was dedicated, shares that have been reversed.

By the end of 2025, the long-term strategic metamorphosis had boosted the dedicated fleet to nearly 8,600 tractors.

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At the time Schneider went public in 2017, Filter was head of the company’s intermodal division. (Schneider)

Acquisitions have been a driving force in the division’s transformation, with November 2024’s $390 million purchase of Baltimore-based Cowan Systems building on the acquisitions of Midwest Logistics Systems and M&M Transport Services in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Filter revealed recently that more acquisitions are likely sooner rather than later, but dedicated carrier acquisitions are only part of his plans for Schneider.

The executive told TT there are four elements in his slight tweak from what’s come before:

• Growth in areas of differentiation
• Building a lower-cost organization
• Earning even greater customer loyalty
• Disciplined M&A

When it comes to the last of the four, he said during an exclusive interview: “We want to focus on those opportunities where we’d be able to realize synergies and continue to grow the business.”

“We just happen to see the most opportunities lying within dedicated, but we’re not averse to an intermodal or logistics opportunity,” he added. “But we would want the right cultural fit and the right opportunities to be able to continue to grow that business.”

The carrier’s business model concentrates on three segments: truckload; intermodal; and logistics, including contract logistics, brokerage and power only.

Schneider ranks No. 10 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America, No. 5 among truckload/dedicated carriers and No. 4 in the intermodal/drayage rankings, as well as No. 18 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies.

Differentiators

Filter has already had time to shape the company, including the past four years as operating president, but he is keen to sharpen those edges.

“We have a lot of differentiation in each one of the service offerings we have, and we want to make sure that we’re focused on growing into those areas, as well as making sure that we’re deploying capital to those places where we have differentiation,” Filter said.

Schneider’s intermodal division is already implementing an initiative exemplifying the ethos of differentiation.

In November 2025, the company launched Fast Track, which combines Schneider’s truckload and intermodal capabilities with strategic rail partnerships to create a network of faster intermodal lanes, and the carrier says it results in up to two days faster transit than competitors on key U.S. and Mexico lanes.

“There are customers that have either their entire supply chain or parts of their supply chain. They have very high expectations for service levels. And in the past, they would often avoid intermodal on those parts of their network,” Filter told TT.

“What we were seeing was that we could actually provide the same level of service for intermodal that we do over the road, because we do haul shipments on intermodal for automotive companies where they virtually need to be 100% on time,” he added.

Schneider has also increased its intermodal lanes connecting Mexico and Midwest and Southeastern states, adding options for automotive, consumer product or paper goods customers.

At a time when federal initiatives on cabotage and visa enforcement are reducing over-the-road truckload capacity, the services are offering differentiation.

Sustainable rebound

Capacity cutbacks boosted rates in the first six months of 2026, and Filter sees the ongoing freight market rebound as sustainable.

“What we now understand is the amount of capacity that entered the market wasn’t playing by the same set of rules as everybody else,” he said, noting that data shows carrier costs climbed about 25% since 2020 due to inflation.

“Rates have not kept up with that pace of inflation. And we expect that it’s probably going to take more than just one allocation season to be able to raise rates up to the point that would equal where we really think this industry should be,” Filter said, adding: “I don’t think you’re going to see capacity reverse itself and begin to grow until we get to that point where all the inflationary costs have been recovered.”

Inflation is accelerating. The annual U.S. inflation rate in May was 4.2%, a three-year high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Not unexpectedly for an industry undergoing its longest downturn in living memory, the economy was the top issue causing stress for trucking executives in 2025 for a third consecutive year, according to the American Transportation Research Institute.

Stress is ever-present for a CEO as the focal point of a company. Filter said Rourke told him it can be a lonely job, but he continues to offer nuggets of advice, as does Lofgren.

Filter has his own prescription for working through the stress: running. “I have a training program, so it’s a different run. Every day is a little bit different,” he said. “I’ll absolutely continue to do that.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify Chris Lofgren's status on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors.