Richard Olson and the art of staying in motion

Richard Olson joined The Toro Company with an exit plan. A couple of years of practical experience, then a business of his own. He arrived in 1986 as a manufacturing process engineer. Forty years later, he is preparing to hand over the chief executive’s job. Somewhere along the way, the temporary stop became an entire working life.

There is an agreeable complication in that story. Olson wanted to run a business, and eventually he did. He simply kept the same employer while changing almost everything about the scope of his work. Factories gave way to a mower business, then international markets, then responsibility for a company whose equipment works above the ground and beneath it.

His departure from the CEO role is scheduled for November 1, 2026. Edric Funk will succeed him; Olson will become executive chairman. The handoff invites a look at an unusually long apprenticeship, and at what happens when someone trained to improve a manufacturing process ends up responsible for the whole enterprise.

The farm came before the factory

Olson grew up on his family’s farm in Iowa. His father had a full-time job at Winnebago Industries, leaving the younger Olson to spend summers and after-school hours working on the farm and leading work crews. Before the corporate titles, there were jobs to finish and other people to organize.

Winnebago supplied another influence. Exposure to the manufacturer helped develop his interest in engineering and business, and he eventually worked there as an industrial engineering intern. The connection between making a thing and making a business was already close at hand. His later career would keep returning to that junction.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial technology at Iowa State University. Toro brought him to Windom, Minnesota, as a process engineer. His subsequent positions included advanced manufacturing, commercial engineering programs, plant operations in Shakopee, and responsibility for northern manufacturing operations. These were jobs in the machinery of the company itself.

Read those titles in sequence and the eventual CEO appointment becomes less mysterious. Each adds another practical question: How should a product be made? How should a plant operate? How do several operations fit together? A career can broaden through geography. Olson’s broadened through the work.

“Business is a team sport.”Rick Olson, 2025

A different education in Beatrice

In 2010, Olson became general manager of Exmark, the company’s mower business in Beatrice, Nebraska. He became its vice president in 2012. By then, he had also earned an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, graduating in 2010. The engineer was acquiring a wider set of business responsibilities.

Exmark put product development and manufacturing beside marketing, sales, and service support. Olson has described the assignment as valuable experience in running a business. That matters to the arc of his original ambition: the opportunity he had imagined seeking elsewhere was taking shape inside Toro.

International responsibility followed in 2013. In June 2014 his remit expanded to international business, micro-irrigation, and distributor development. The progression reached well beyond the factory gate. Equipment makers depend on the people who sell, maintain, and support their machines; those relationships became part of his daily business.

In September 2015 he became president and chief operating officer, overseeing Toro’s businesses and global operations. Michael Hoffman, then chairman and CEO, pointed to Olson’s experience across manufacturing and business leadership when announcing the promotion. Olson took over as chief executive in November 2016 and added the chairmanship in November 2017.

The lawn company goes underground

A lawn mower makes Toro easy to recognize. A directional drill makes its business harder to summarize. During Olson’s CEO tenure, the company expanded its infrastructure presence through acquisitions, including the purchase of Charles Machine Works. The familiar patch of grass was becoming a rather incomplete picture.

Announced in February 2019 and completed that April, the Charles Machine Works deal carried a $700 million purchase price, subject to adjustments. It brought Ditch Witch and other underground construction brands into the group. The acquired portfolio covered equipment for installing and maintaining underground pipe and cable, from trenchers and drills to locating and rehabilitation tools.

The attraction was broader than another recognizable brand. Underground equipment put Toro alongside customers working on infrastructure, with machines serving different tasks from turf maintenance. It also brought manufacturing operations, dealers, and technical knowledge that had to become part of the larger business. Buying a company starts a second job: learning how to run the combination.

Other additions widened the professional equipment range. Venture Products, maker of Ventrac equipment, joined in March 2020. Intimidator Group followed in January 2022, bringing Spartan commercial-grade zero-turn mowers. These acquisitions expanded products, manufacturing capacity, and dealer relationships. The work involved more than deciding which machines belonged in a catalog.

There is a useful parallel with Olson’s earlier assignments. He had spent years moving between operations, product work, and whole businesses. As chief executive, he was overseeing a portfolio in which those same disciplines had to operate across more brands. Scale multiplied the number of relationships requiring attention.

A robot still needs a useful job

Toro’s expansion also included technology. Its fiscal 2021 acquisitions of Turflynx assets and Left Hand Robotics assets supported autonomous turf and snow management capabilities. These were investments in how work might be performed, alongside the acquisitions that extended where the company competed.

By October 2025, Olson was discussing an autonomous fairway mower during a conversation with Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Farrell. He also described using artificial intelligence internally for work such as product innovation and customer support. His enthusiasm connected the office and the golf course: technology could change both the creation of equipment and the customer’s use of it.

For a professional customer, a machine must earn its place in the working day. That gives the conversation about robotics a useful anchor. A golf course superintendent has a course to maintain; a contractor has work to complete. The interesting question is what the equipment helps them accomplish, and with what demands on their time.

Olson’s outlook remains forward-facing after decades in manufacturing. That is a pleasing detail in a career with so much continuity. The same company name has appeared on his employment history since 1986, while the subjects under discussion now include software, alternative power, connectivity, and machines that can work autonomously.

The numbers, and the people behind them

His final months as CEO come with improving quarterly results. In September 2026, Toro reported third-quarter sales of approximately $1.23 billion, an 8.4 percent increase from a year earlier. Professional segment sales were about $1.01 billion, compared with $209.3 million in residential sales. The professional customer accounts for much of the business.

The quarter also contained friction. Higher material and manufacturing costs weighed on professional segment margins, even as sales rose. That detail belongs beside the growth figures. An operator’s work continues after demand improves: pricing, inventory, production costs, and product mix still need attention.

Olson’s public comments about leadership return to people. He values listening and the ability to engage different skills and perspectives. His interests outside work include vintage cars and the outdoors. The first gives the engineer something mechanical to enjoy; the second happens to be where his company’s customers spend much of their time.

He also serves on Donaldson Company’s board, which he joined in 2022, and on Carlson’s Board of Overseers. Those connections place him in conversations beyond Toro while preserving ties to manufacturing and business education. His own education continued well into his career; he now has a place in the institutions where others are learning.

Another engineer takes the controls

Funk’s appointment gives the handoff a familiar shape. He joined Toro in 1996 as a design engineer and became president and chief operating officer in September 2025. His career has included engineering, marketing, product management, and technology leadership. Another long-serving employee is moving from the operating business into the CEO’s office.

Olson will remain involved as executive chairman. The announced transition therefore changes the division of leadership responsibilities while retaining his experience at board level. For a company built through products, factories, acquisitions, and distribution relationships, handing over the job includes handing over a great deal of accumulated context.

That context is the product of assignments carried out over years: understanding a plant, leading a brand, learning a market, and then making decisions across the group. The announced handoff gives those years a new purpose, with the next chief executive taking responsibility for what comes next.

The young process engineer had intended to learn enough to leave. He kept finding another part of the business worth learning. Forty years later, that may be the most revealing fact about Richard Olson’s career: staying in one place required him to keep moving.