Another week, another prominent company reputation accolade list out of Forbes.

On the same day that we covered which distributors appeared on the business publication’s “2026 America’s Best Companies” list, it dropped its latest ranking feature — ”America’s Top Private Companies”.

Whereas the earlier feature is dominated by publicly traded firms, the latter are all private, with many of them family-owned. Still, all are large companies — needing at least $3 billion in annual revenue to qualify, and can’t be majority owned by private equity.

Once again, wholesale distributors were well-represented on the list of 200, prompting MDM to carve them out here.

• Here’s Which Distributors Were Just Named “Best Companies to Sell For” (July)
• Here’s Where Distributors Rank on the 2025 Fortune 500 (June)
• Here’s Which Distributors Made Fortune’s 2025 “Most Admired” List (March, Premium)

The top of Forbes’ America’s Top Private Companies 2025 list has stayed remarkably consistent, with agricultural giant Cargill repeating this year at No. 1 for the fifth straight year and the 38th time in the past 39 years. Forbes noted that another 43 companies have been on the list all four decades of its existence and nearly two-thirds of the companies in this year’s ranks have been on the list for the decade. 

A dozen new companies joined the list in 2025, including ChatGPT purveyor OpenAI. Meanwhile, the highest ranking newcomer is chemicals and plastics distributor Tricon Energy at No. 35.

Below, see which wholesale distributors and companies that have distribution as a major business component garnered a spot on the Forbes 2025 Top Private Companies List: