David Osman takes the wheel of CFE Transportation.
Long before leading the transportation department, David Osman was running the cultivator on his family farm in central Iowa—and that’s where it all started. David was introduced to agriculture, machinery and trucking from an early age, as his mother, Marlys Osman, started farming in 1980 as a single, divorced mother of two. She farmed 600 acres in Franklin County, Iowa, with her father until he retired in 1983, then continued on the farm until 2004, when she retired. Those younger years gave him an appreciation for the industry that he’s carried with him from the farm to the truck cab and to transportation leadership roles across the state.
Now, that experience has brought him to CFE, where he has taken on the brand new title of Vice President of Transportation. With the formation of the transportation department, David’s role is to breathe new life into an area of business that has traditionally been looked at as a line item rather than an area for opportunity and efficiency.
THE JOURNEY HERE
After high school, David played college baseball before getting his CDL and driving truck full time over the road. For five years, David trucked across the country until he met his wife, Anita—who was also raised on a farm, in Butler County, Iowa—and his priorities shifted. He returned his focus to his family’s row crop operation and hauled grain and feed ingredients locally. Before long, another trucking-related opportunity presented itself—a dispatch position for a steel manufacturer.
It was a balancing act for David, spending more than 40 hours per week being a dispatcher and still grain farming. At the same time, David and Anita welcomed their first child, and David decided to go back to school, earning his degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Human Resources. “That was definitely a busy time,” David laughs looking back on his early career, but his strong work ethic, industry experience and business education would prove extremely useful as his profession developed.
From there, he joined a large truck line in Fort Dodge as their Director of Sales and Marketing, and later moved on to an agricultural processing and transportation company in Conrad as their Director of Transportation. Here, he was able to combine his passion for agriculture with his expertise in transportation and spent over a decade overseeing all trucking movements for the business. But after years of nearly two-hour round-trip commutes, David took an opening closer to home with a major swine integrator based in Iowa Falls. As their Director of Transportation, David was responsible for the movement of over 350,ooo head of hogs each week—an important, yet demanding role.
A NEW PATH
After these experiences, David decided to look for a position with more of a focus on leadership and a more local-first feel, and that opportunity came at our cooperative. One of the things that intrigued David most about CFE was the willingness to rethink the role transportation plays in overall business operations. Transportation is often viewed as a cost center for companies, an expense that comes with moving product but David brings a new perspective focused on growth and productivity.
“I appreciate how CFE is really looking at how we run transportation as a business and as an extension of service both internally and externally,” David states, sharing his enthusiasm to place more emphasis on the strategy behind transportation. This means better asset utilization, management of maintenance and repairs, efficiency of loaded miles, stronger communication with freight partners and leveraging purchasing power. To him, heightened efficiency depends on utilizing these resources across the entire company and getting down to the cost per asset, not just the cost per mile.
A unique part of David’s position, and transportation as a whole, is just how many departments it touches. “Transportation is fun because you get to work with grain, agronomy, feed, lumber—everyone really,” he says with a smile. That diversity and ability to interact with so many different people is part of what makes the job so special for David. Growing up, when his family hauled their grain to town, what always stood out to him was the people—the operators who helped unload grain, the team in the office, the agronomists who came to the fields and many more. David carries those memories with him as he builds relationships with intentionality, appreciating how those experiences have come full circle.
This newfound division’s main goal is to ensure the people-focused, community-centric feel never fades no matter how fast-paced operations get or how much the division grows. The transportation team will be tasked with a specific balancing act, combining localized business with streamlined execution. For both our patrons and our employees, we want to champion local access, simplified scheduling and reduced downtime.
THE ROAD AHEAD
For David, there’s plenty to think about: numbers to crunch, ideas to outline, processes to put into practice. He plans to build a small but mighty team that will manage all transport movements. In doing so, he hopes to bring visibility to the transportation division for both customers and colleagues. David’s focus will be on technology, communication and regular interactions that strengthen cross-department functionality and consumer experience. The transportation division will lead CFE as a shared resource, serving our grain, feed, agronomy and lumber divisions by delivering safe, efficient, coordinated transportation that maximizes the total cooperative value, rather than single-department convenience.
Ultimately, the transportation department will operate with clearly established plans that allow for movement forecasting, while still accommodating flexibility. This industry will always require the ability to react—weather, seasonality, markets and other outside pressures beyond control. David is a big proponent of controlling the controllables, preparing the best you can and knowing that sometimes, the only option is to adapt.
That philosophy is also something he hopes to extend to the leadership team at CFE. As Vice President of Transportation, David is responsible for building trust among the entire cooperative, which means critically analyzing decisions, encouraging difficult conversations and believing that change is necessary for growth. As this new role and new department come to life, that determined, business-minded mentality will certainly be a valuable asset to CFE.
“This will only be possible due to the quality of current employees at CFE,” David says. “I want to personally thank our drivers, location personnel, leadership and contract partners for welcoming me to CFE and starting the journey of change and alignment to a customer/business focused environment while maintaining our local presence.”
When it comes down to it, CFE is changing the way we view transportation—we’re segregating it out of an expense line and looking at it in detail to create a roadmap that takes us to the next level of efficiency. David is particularly fond of the Vince Lombardi quote: “Perfection is unattainable, but if you chase perfection you can catch excellence,” and he strives to make that his continuous improvement model. The real measure of success will be utilizing the cooperative’s resources responsibly, building a transportation division positioned for profitability and growth, all while ensuring the efficiency gained along the way favors our patrons.
A PERSONAL MOVE
David Osman was onto something when he highlighted his desire for cross-department collaboration. It even manifested into an extra special form—a new house. With this job move comes a physical location move for David, Anita and their dog, Bailey, and that meant finding their new forever home. The Osmans’ son, Connor, currently attends Northwestern College in Orange City, and their daughter, Elise, graduated from Northwestern before pursuing her master’s degree at Iowa State, so the couple of empty nesters knew the northwest Iowa area well. Elise remained in Ames, working as a campus visit coordinator for Iowa State University, following in her mother’s footsteps in education. Anita has been an elementary school teacher for 27 years, and she plans to continue on that path following the Osmans’ move to Spencer. Both Elise and Connor are named after their grandparents, and they are proud to carry on their family’s legacies. David knew that a company that put families first was a priority for him, and between CFE’s footprint and core values, it was the perfect placement.
But little did David know, as he focuses on building the transportation department, the lumber department is focusing on building his family home. So far, the Osmans have had a terrific experience working with David’s counterparts in the lumber division and have really enjoyed partnering with the design team to turn their vision into reality. Getting to see the hard work of your company both at home and in the office truly solidifies the culture created with our community and at CFE.
