Ron Vachris became CEO of Costco on January 1, 2024, more than four decades after he started at the company’s predecessor, Price Club, as a part-time forklift driver in 1982.
He was studying business at Glendale Community College in Arizona when he took the job and left without finishing a degree. His father, a utility lineman, told him to take the worst job he could get at the best company that would hire him, U.S. News & World Report reported. Fortune quoted the father’s lesson as: “Don’t chase a title. Don’t chase anything big. Just go make yourself your own success.”
Vachris took the advice to heart. “I wish I had the vision back in the ’80s about what this industry and what this company could be,” he said at the Economic Club of Chicago, according to Fortune’s June 2026 report. “But it rings true to my father’s comments: Find this company that stands for what you want to stand for, and then the rest is up to you.”
After several years on the forklift, he became an assistant warehouse manager in Phoenix. He managed Price Club’s expansion into Colorado in 1991, and by 1992 he ran warehouses in Aurora and Westminster, according to his Wikipedia biography. After Price Club merged with Costco in 1993, he moved back to Arizona, then became a regional vice president in San Diego in 1999. By then his 24 stores outnumbered the entire chain when he was hired, U.S. News reported.
Running his own warehouse in 1992 was the turning point, he told U.S. News. “That was the time that I really developed my leadership skills,” he said, adding that he learned “the importance of surrounding yourself with great people, and putting them in the right places, and really strategic thinking.”
He moved into corporate management in 2010 as senior vice president and general manager of the Northwest region, a job he held until July 2015, according to Costco’s board biography. He then served as senior vice president of real estate development and, from June 2016 to January 2022, as executive vice president of merchandising. He became president and chief operating officer in February 2022 under then-CEO Craig Jelinek, and Costco named him Jelinek’s successor on October 10, 2023. “Ten years ago, if you asked me if I’d be sitting here today, I’d tell you I doubt it very much,” he said, Fortune reported.
Vachris is the third CEO in Costco’s history, and he says his rise is common at the company. “My story is not a unique one inside of Costco,” he told U.S. News. “I’m just another employee who has worked their way up, like all the executives around me.” Executive vice president Claudine Adamo started as a door greeter, senior vice president Scott O’Brien began as a meat cutter, and more than 80% of Costco’s store managers started as hourly employees.
Fortune traced his four-decade rise to another line from his father: “Take the worst job in a great company, and the rest is up to you.”