J.B. Hunt’s Sustainability Journey
J.B. Hunt has been making moves to improve sustainability as a company since our founding in 1961. Keep reading to see how J.B. Hunt has worked to make itself more sustainable since day one and how our more than 60 years of industry experience can help you build a more sustainable supply chain.
1961
Our founder, Johnnie Bryan Hunt, started out as a driver himself. One day while driving past the rice fields in Stuttgart, Arkansas, Mr. Hunt noticed people burning rice hulls – the hard, protective coating covering each grain of rice. Always thinking big, Mr. Hunt saw an opportunity.
Mr. Hunt engineered a way to use the discarded rice hulls as chicken bedding. He found a way to take waste and recycle it into something useful. Before they founded the J.B. Hunt you know today, the Hunts first built a business on Mr. Hunt’s idea to recycle rice hulls. Innovation works hand-in-hand with sustainability, and Mr. Hunt was an innovator.
1969
Ever the entrepreneur, Mr. Hunt ventured into the trucking business in 1969 by purchasing five trucks and seven trailers and relocating to Northwest Arkansas. Mr. Hunt focused on exceptional customer service and operational efficiency. He built a reputation based on reliability.
Mr. Hunt was a dreamer and a visionary. And Mrs. Hunt was the steady force supporting his vision, a trailblazer in her own right. Together, they were an unstoppable force. Over the next five decades, J.B. Hunt would continually transform how freight is moved because of Mr. Hunt’s bold vision and Mrs. Hunt’s operational might.
1978
One of the easiest and most effective ways to ship more sustainably is to maximize efficiency. Efficiency was something Mr. Hunt always prioritized. In 1978, J.B. Hunt embarked on a mission to increase efficiency across the board, in every process, every piece of equipment – everywhere.
We standardized our fleet with smaller, more fuel-efficient engines, which improved fuel mileage, fleet efficiency and utilization. Standardization meant our equipment was interchangeable to our mechanics, who only had to learn how to work on one type of truck, and to our drivers, who were able to drive any truck in our fleet, allowing us to say “yes” to more loads without buying more equipment. In other words, we were able to do more with less while driving out waste in our processes. This was a pioneering move in efficiency that changed our trajectory forever.
1989
In 1989, J.B. Hunt made an industry-disrupting move. At a time when railroads and trucking companies competed for freight, J.B. Hunt worked with the Santa Fe Railway, now known as BNSF, to launch the industry’s first modern intermodal transportation solution called Quantum. The growth from that one idea was explosive, leading to more innovations: double stacking containers, creating company-owned chassis and adding onsite terminals and express gates.
Not only did J.B. Hunt provide a service that met the needs of our customers with intermodal, but we created one of the most sustainable ways to ship freight to date. Converting a shipment to intermodal reduces its carbon footprint by an average of 65% compared to traditional over-the-road truck transportation. Over the past decade, J.B. Hunt’s intermodal service has helped avoid an estimated 30 million metric tons of CO2e emissions through intermodal conversion.
Today, J.B. Hunt is North America’s largest intermodal provider. In 2023, we launched a joint initiative with BNSF and named it Quantum, a J.B. Hunt and BNSF service™, as a nod to our first intermodal venture together back in the 1980s. Quantum makes it easier than ever to convert your highway freight to intermodal and provides the consistency, agility and speed you need for all your service-sensitive highway freight.
2000s
In the early 2000s, natural gas vehicles emerged as a fuel option with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since that time, we have worked directly with OEMs, fuel suppliers and infrastructure developers to address the economic and operational viability of compressed natural gas trucks and fuel, and their potential impact on greenhouse gas reductions.
Today, we operate nearly 200 renewable natural gas-powered trucks. While use of natural gas still results in tailpipe emissions, it can result in as much as a 300% reduction in life cycle greenhouse gases. Using natural gas trucks with renewable natural gas fuel can be a potentially more cost-effective solution to reduce emissions when compared to current ZEV offerings.
2017
In April 2017, we launched the J.B. Hunt 360°® platform, which brings supply and demand together in one online marketplace. By directly connecting shipments with capacity, the platform enables us to significantly enhance the efficiency of our transportation operations by eliminating empty miles. In 2023, over 4 million empty miles were avoided through our J.B. Hunt 360° platform.
That same year, J.B. Hunt was one of the first companies to place an order for an all-electric heavy-duty Class 8 truck.
2020
In 2020, J.B. Hunt created an executive position focusing on sustainability. We began benchmarking and reporting our sustainability work so we knew how we were progressing and what we could do better. That same year, we formed the Sustainability Committee, which meets to discuss J.B. Hunt’s sustainability goals. The committee is made up of people from nearly every part of our business.
2021
J.B. Hunt was the first road transportation company to release a sustainability report. As the people you trust, we want to be transparent with our customers and stakeholders about our sustainability efforts. We release a new report every other year and release a data supplement between each report.
2022
In 2022, we launched our CLEAN Transport® initiative, a carbon-neutral program that provides our intermodal customers with an easy and flexible method to acquire carbon offset credits equivalent to the emissions produced by their shipments. To extend the emissions reduction achieved through intermodal conversion, a shipment’s remaining emissions are offset with carbon offset credits. The program is designed to be highly customizable to fit each customer’s unique business and sustainability goals.
That same year, we announced our ambitious goal to reduce our carbon emission intensity 32% by 2034, from our 2019 baseline. We are already halfway to reaching our goal. From our 2019 baseline, we have reduced our carbon emission intensity by 16%.
2023
Throughout 2023, J.B. Hunt began to incorporate Class 8 electric Freightliner eCascadia trucks into our operations. By the end of the year, we were operating eight eCascadias in southern California as we continued to assess and consider a larger scale adoption for our dray fleets and our customer dedicated fleets.
Designing for Our Customers
Our mission is straightforward: driving long-term value for our people, customers and shareholders. When we make decisions regarding sustainability, we do so with our customers’ needs in mind. Our investments in a mode-neutral transportation model and alternative-fuel vehicles, our industry-leading technology and carbon emissions initiatives were all made to help our customers move freight more efficiently and sustainably. Through our Carbon Diet methodology, we first measure a customer’s carbon footprint then design a custom plan to help them achieve their sustainability goals.
Ready to see how J.B. Hunt can help you build a more sustainable supply chain that creates added value for your business? Let’s connect!