About Bob Sanft

Bob joined Consultran in 1977, fresh out of college — the company's first full-time employee. He worked here two years before the office got its first computer, a Tandy. In 1991, the owners called him into a meeting, and Bob assumed he was about to need a résumé. He was only half listening until the last sentence: "…and that's why we'd like you to buy the company."

He ran Consultran for the next 31 years. He designed the firm's own fuel-and-mileage tax software in the early 1990s — flexible enough to add a new state tax with a setting instead of a rewrite — and its descendant still processes fuel-tax data today. When Minnesota rolled out new licensing systems, the state hired Bob to test them, because nobody had filed more of these than he had.

He built beyond the office, too. As chairman of his industry association, Bob spent years arguing that the two national service-bureau groups — same members, same speakers, same week of the year — belonged together. The merger finally came together over a conversation at a joint meeting in Portland, and the organization it created, NATSA, calls him an integral part of its founding. He gave the group's own historical-narrative talk in 2020.

But mostly, he taught — clients, employees, anyone who called. He believed a compliance firm should make its clients smarter, not more dependent: show them what's due, when, and why. His standing rule for the team never changed: don't bluff. If you don't know, say so — then go find out.

The relationships were the point. Bob worked with second- and third-generation owners of the same family businesses, and more than a few clients became friends — when his parents died, the flowers and cards came from carriers. He put it simply:"This is all about relationships."

Bob retired in 2022 after more than four decades, passing the business to its next generation and staying a phone call away as the team's resident historian of the trucking industry. He passed away in October 2024.

The standard he set — teach, check the data, know every client by name — still runs this place.