In a relationship-driven industry like wholesale distribution, trust is everything. It’s the basis of your reputation — both internally and externally. It makes or breaks how you do business with longtime and new customers, suppliers and industry partners. Without it, business doesn’t get done.

On that front, there aren’t many measures of how trustworthy a business is, let alone specifically among distributors. But at least one prominent publication has put together an index of company trust for a subset of the business world.

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On Nov. 13, Forbes unveiled its 2026 “Most Trusted Companies in America List,” which is the third annual year of the feature. To create the list, Forbes analyzed move than 1,500 public and private companies with at least 10,000 employees. From there, Forbes created a list of the top 300. Companies were scored across six criteria — Employee sentiment, customer sentiment, financial performance, business trajectory, media sentiment and workforce stability — with each relying on an existing ratings or data source publication. Overall, more than 50 total metrics are factored in. See Forbes’ full methodology here.

Topping the 2026 list were two technology giants: NVIDIA and Amazon, followed by Netflix, American Express and Morgan Stanley to round out the top 5.

Presenting MDM’s 2025 Women in Distribution Honorees

Here’s which distributors made the cut, how they ranked, and which industry sector Forbes categorized them in:

122 — Genuine Parts (Retail & Wholesale)
        – comprised of distribution subsidiaries Motion and NAPA Auto Parts

155 — Medline Industries (Medical Equipment & Services)

157 — Grainger (Construction, Chemicals & Raw Materials)

174 — Graybar (Capital Goods)

183 — ABC Supply (Construction, Chemicals, Raw Materials)

225 — US Foods (Food, Soft Beverages, Alcohol & Tobacco)

234 — Thermo Fisher Scientific (Drugs & Biotechnology)

240 — Resideo (Technology Hardware & Equipment)

241 — Cencora (Retail & Wholesale)

256 — Henry Schein (Health Care Equipment & Services)

266 — Wesco (Transportation & Logistics)

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Notes:

• All of the above companies were among MDM’s 2025 Top Distributors Lists
• The Home Depot — which acquired building materials suppliers SRS Distribution and GMS over the past 18 months along with numerous other industrial distributors over the past 30 years — was No. 80.
• Lowe’s — which just acquired building materials distributor Foundation Building Materials — was No. 166 

Context

Of course, Forbes list here only accounts for large companies — given the minimum of 10,000 employees. Numerous studies show that American trust small companies significantly more than large ones. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that 70% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in small business vs. just 15% in Big Business. Pew Research released in Q424 found that 86% of Americans believe small businesses have a positive effect on the U.S., while only 29% believe the same about large corporations. 

That note isn’t to knock poorly against large companies. If anything, it shows that garnering reputation and trust-oriented honors are particularly important for large distributors.

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