J.B. Hunt Transport Services

More than a new business or business model, the founding of J.B. Hunt Transport was a bold idea that changed the course of trucking history. What began with a train ride and a handshake in 1989 became one of the most significant innovations in modern transportation.

Thirty-five years ago, founder J.B. Hunt and Santa Fe Railway President Mike Haverty looked beyond the way freight had always moved. At a time when trucking companies and railroads were viewed as competitors, they saw an opportunity to work together.

Their vision was simple but powerful: Combine the flexibility of trucks with the efficiency of rail to create a better experience for customers. That idea became the foundation for its intermodal business and helped reshape the supply chain across North America.

Today, the people at J.B. Hunt still take inspiration from those two men’s willingness to challenge conventional thinking. They focused on solving customer problems, improving efficiency, and creating new opportunities for growth. Because of that mindset, intermodal evolved from a bold experiment into a critical part of how freight moves today.

Over the years, J.B. Hunt has continued to parlay that first-mile brainstorm into milestone innovations such as double-stack containers, company-owned chassis, expanded terminal networks, and technology-driven solutions that improve reliability and visibility.

Today, J.B. Hunt is North America’s largest intermodal provider, and their long-standing collaboration with BNSF continues to create value for customers. In 2023, they relaunched Quantum, their premium intermodal service, bringing J.B. Hunt and BNSF teams together under one roof to provide around-the-clock oversight for service-sensitive freight.

Together, they now also provide new cross-border capabilities into Mexico, helping customers access efficient and lower-carbon transportation options.

But the story that matters most isn’t about what they’ve accomplished. It’s about what comes next. The same spirit of innovation that led J.B. Hunt and Mike Haverty to rethink freight transportation is alive today and spawning amazing technologies, capacities, and people—all inspired by the conviction that the future will be defined by those willing to challenge assumptions and embrace change.

Intermodal remains one of the strongest examples of what’s possible when great partnerships, bold thinking, and customer focus come together. Which is why J.B. Hunt believes that the next era of innovation will be just as transformative as the last, and they are committed to leading the way.

Sometimes you don’t want to get away from traffic—you want to follow it...especially when it’s your own web traffic trying to tell you something. That’s what led J.B. Hunt to its market-disrupting, landmark 360® Platform, officially introduced in 2017.

Analysts at J.B. Hunt had noticed that truckers kept finding their way to a clunky old carrier page on their website buried several clicks deep, under obscure tabs. It wasn't easy to find, and yet carriers kept going there over and over again, sometimes dozens of times a day. Why? Because their small fleets and independent truckers could scan and book the company’s overflow brokerage freight quickly, bypassing time-consuming phone tag with brokers, with the assurance of booking loads from a blue-chip, financially responsible company.

That was when J.B. Hunt realized they were looking at the proven desire for a self-service digital freight marketplace. Beyond moving their own boxes, J.B. Hunt could also become a digital clearinghouse uniting carriers and shippers, supply and demand.

It was the start of a $500 million investment in the first phases of the revolutionary 360® Platform—the first digital freight marketplace from an asset-based carrier. They took what truckers were already attempting to do on a crude, hidden web page and turned it into an automated marketplace with live pricing, instant booking, and automated quick-pay. A bold move, but one that has evolved into a platform with dozens of products and services connecting more than a million trucks since its inception.

J.B. Hunt knew its business was built on relationships, so it thoughtfully engineered an online technology that didn’t try to replace relationships, but reinforce them. They were exquisitely aware that the platform would be as disruptive to their own traditional ways of doing business as anyone else’s, and they welcomed the opportunity to ride the crest of the wave rather than be buried by it.

… all while creating something that has helped move the entire industry forward.

Today, the whole world and the world of trucking in particular are entering another era of transformation driven by technology. J.B. Hunt has every intention of learning from its legacy of ideas like the 360® Platform and embracing change, solving problems, and finding ways to use new tools to create value for customers. It believes its greatest competitive advantage has never been technology alone, but people willing to learn, adapt, lead, and thrive during moments of disruption.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, has it made a noise? If you work hard for a customer and they’re not aware of it, has the work done its job? Back in 2001, one J.B. Hunt relationship drove home the distinction between working hard for a customer and creating perceived value.

They thought they were doing everything right. They added resources, adjusted operations, and found ways to support the customer’s needs. The team felt committed to delivering exactly what was required.

Then they lost the business.

It might have been one of the best things that could have happened because it drastically transformed how J.B. Hunt thought about and nurtured customer relationships. In a post-mortem sit-down with the customer, the team realized that the value they had been creating was invariably invisible and sometimes misaligned with the customer’s priorities.

One team leader remembers: “It forced us to take a step back and ask ourselves how, if we’re creating value for our customers, we make sure we measure it, communicate it, and look for new opportunities that are exactly in tune with what the customer wants most.”

That’s where J.B. Hunt’s Customer Value Delivery® methodology, or CVD, began. CVD is a thoughtfully constructed process built to better understand each customer, deliver on commitments, measure performance, communicate results, and continually look for new opportunities to create value exactly in line with customer needs. It is a framework for cementing strong relationships and continually staying aligned with what matters most.

The CVD Program overrides assumptions with discussion and data – because the customer may have an unanticipated definition of success, and the metrics that really matter may differ. CVD has become the foundation for building business relationships from the customer’s point of view.

Which is why CVD has grown beyond a single business unit and become part of how J.B. Hunt operates across the company. More than two decades later, its principles continue to guide how it works with customers, solves problems, and pursues continuous improvement.

Customer Value Delivery is nothing less than a milestone marking a cultural change of mindset. It helped J.B. Hunt move beyond simply providing transportation services to focusing on creating measurable value for every customer who trusts the company with their business. It came from a hard lesson, a willingness to listen, learn, and institutionalize a commitment to get better. More than 20 years later, that lesson still reverberates in how J.B. Hunt serves its customers and strives to add value at every turn.

Who better than the people closest to the work to have the best ideas for improving it? Throughout its history, J.B. Hunt has leaped from one milestone to the next by hewing closely to this school of thought.

The company behaves as though the status quo is always there to be questioned, and that innovation is never assumed to be limited to a certain team, department, or title. Great ideas can come from anywhere, but most particularly from the people closest to the problem or the process.

That’s why the creation of J.B. Hunt’s ELEVATION program, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2015, is such a milestone of milestones: Its whole reason for being has been to grease the wheels of innovation by empowering staff at all levels to share innovative concepts that improve operations, cut waste, improve the customer experience, and drive company growth.

ELEVATION has proven all the more potent of late as technology continues to transform how businesses operate. J.B. Hunt sees technology as a force multiplier whose leverage begins at the grassroots, with the people who best understand its business, processes, and customers.

Proof of concept: the company’s recent ELEVATION Innovation and Technology Sprint. This was a month-long initiative designed to uncover new ways technology can help the company work smarter, simplify processes, and create an even better experience for employees and customers alike.

The response exceeded expectations: Employees from across the company submitted nearly 1,000 technology-focused ideas, nearly doubling the original goal. The submissions ranged from automation opportunities and process improvements to enhanced visibility and ways to reduce manual work.

While the ideas were varied, they reflected a common theme. Employees are energized by the opportunity to innovate and help shape what’s next for the business. While the sheer numbers are impressive—ELEVATION has tallied well over 30,000 submissions since its inception—perhaps the most meaningful outcome has been the enthusiasm with which this program has been met. J.B. Hunt people don’t want to wait for someone else to drive change. They have embraced the opportunity to help move the company ahead.

As technology continues to evolve, that mindset will become even more important. New tools will emerge and capabilities will continue to expand. But for J.B. Hunt, innovation has never been just about technology. It’s about people who are willing to challenge assumptions, think differently, and pursue better ways of working. The recent ELEVATION Innovation and Technology Sprint reinforced a culture where every employee can contribute, every perspective matters, and continuous improvement is all in the family. The ideas shared during the Sprint reflect the creativity, curiosity, and problem-solving mindset that will continue helping J.B. Hunt find new first miles to conquer.

It wasn’t some breakthrough technology. It didn’t make headlines. But it mattered. It made lives easier. It saved money. And it epitomizes a J.B. Hunt mentality that’s been with them since their first miles. From the boardroom to the back lots, the culture at J.B. Hunt has always been to never accept a problem as just part of the job, but to think about a better way.

A few years ago, J.B. Hunt maintenance crews were dealing with a persistent issue involving manifest boxes on their intermodal equipment. The boxes were falling short in everyday operating conditions, resulting in frequent damage, replacements, and unnecessary costs. Traditional, by-the-book fixes just couldn’t hold up to the environments in which the equipment operated every day.

But instead of continuing to live with, work around, or wait for someone else to solve it, the team took the initiative to rethink it entirely. They meticulously studied why the existing designs were failing, then proposed solutions specifically for the way the equipment was being used.

Their goal was to create something functional, not flashy; something practical, durable, and easy to maintain that would stand up to real-world conditions.

After multiple iterations of development and testing, they unveiled a purpose-built manifest box that significantly improved durability and reliability. What started as an operational challenge ultimately became a patented solution that has since been deployed across thousands of units in J.B. Hunt’s intermodal network. The results were immediate and measurable. The design reduced failures, lowered replacement costs, and minimized avoidable damage. Most importantly, it improved the everyday experience for the employees who maintain and operate the equipment.

The innovation wasn’t so much a milestone in itself as an illustration of where milestones come from. The people closest to the work saw a challenge firsthand, refused to accept that it couldn’t be fixed, and developed the solution. That’s the fixation and perspiration behind innovation, initiated by a team of employees who saw an opportunity to make something better and were determined to turn an idea into reality.

That mindset has been part of J.B. Hunt since its founder challenged conventional thinking to build a better transportation company. That same spirit continues to drive them today. Empower employees to solve problems, and their improvements don’t just benefit your own operations; they can create value for an entire industry, and inspire others to think outside the existing box.

Sometimes all it takes is one customer question to change the future of your business. That’s certainly the case with J.B. Hunt and its 360box® platform, introduced in 2019.

J.B. Hunt 360°®, officially introduced two years earlier, had proven to be one of the company’s greatest innovations. But its next evolution wasn’t something they brainstormed in a conference room. It came directly out of a customer advisory session where executives were sharing their vision for a digital marketplace that would connect freight with capacity more efficiently than ever before. The response was positive, but then one customer asked one question: “Could you also do this with a trailer?”

As one exec remembers, “That stopped us in our tracks.”

At the time, a significant portion of truckload freight moved through drop trailer networks. Shippers wanted the flexibility of loading and unloading on their own schedule, and drivers wanted to avoid wasting valuable time sitting at docks waiting for freight. Yet those drop trailer opportunities largely existed outside of digital freight marketplaces and were typically controlled by large asset-based carriers.

The more J.B. Hunt personnel thought about it, the more they realized their customers were pointing out the next opportunity. What if they could combine the power of a digital marketplace with a company-owned trailer network? What if they could offer the flexibility of brokerage, the reliability of an asset-based carrier, and the scale of technology all in one solution? That was the beginning of J.B. Hunt 360box®.

The result was a solution that supports both shippers and drivers. More than another business opportunity, the concept represented a groundbreaking challenge to the status quo by blending physical assets, marketplace capacity, and technology in a completely new way.

Since its launch, this model has leveraged the best of both asset and non-asset approaches to improve service, efficiency, and flexibility.

For J.B. Hunt, the legacy of 360box is more than trailers moving across the country. It’s proof of the power of listening. A customer’s question became an idea. An idea became an investment. And that investment became a solution that helps connect freight, capacity, and people in ways that weren't possible before.

That first mile didn’t begin with a launch; it began with a listen. It began with staying curious, being open to unimagined ideas, and having the courage to pursue opportunities and take new avenues that others didn’t see.

In the 2000s, J.B. Hunt built its new Final Mile Services® on the realization that whether it’s a direct customer or a customer’s customer, the one at the end of the road is the one that matters most. For furniture retailers, appliance manufacturers, and other companies shipping large, bulky products, their trucking company’s delivery to distribution centers, warehouses, and stores isn’t the end of the supply chain.

The final delivery into a customer's home has become one of the most important brand touchpoints, and the transaction that buyers often remember most. The timeliness and quality of that delivery can leave a lasting impression that either cements consumer loyalty or erodes it.

J.B. Hunt began by helping manufacturers and distributors move freight across the country. But as supply chains evolved, their customers had a new question: “What comes next?” The problem was that moving freight to a city and delivering a refrigerator into someone’s kitchen required two very different capabilities.

For J.B. Hunt, that problem resolved into a new opportunity. Rather than viewing the last mile as someone else's responsibility, they believed it could be a natural extension of what they were doing already. If they could bring their same prized focus on service, reliability, and operational excellence to final delivery, they could create even more value for all the customers involved: manufacturer, middleman, and consumer.

That belief led to the creation of what is now J.B. Hunt Final Mile Services. Building the business required them to think differently: Success wasn’t just about transportation; it was about the consumer experience. It meant coordinating delivery appointments, entering homes safely and professionally, and ensuring products arrived exactly as expected. It required specialized teams, new operating models, and a different definition of service.

In sum, it expanded the role they played for their immediate customers by now managing the journey all the way to the final destination and helping them build their relationship with the buyer.

Over time, that vision has continued to grow. What started as a way to solve a customer need evolved into a comprehensive final mile network serving some of the largest brands in North America. Today, Final Mile Services supports deliveries of furniture, appliances, fitness equipment, and other big-and-bulky products while creating a better experience for both customers and consumers.

You’ll notice that pattern repeats throughout J.B. Hunt’s history. As one executive put it, “We listen. We learn. And then we build solutions around what our customers truly need. This wasn’t about entering a new business simply for the sake of growth. It was about recognizing that the supply chain didn’t end at the store, the warehouse, or the distribution center. There was one more mile to go—and often the most important one.”

All of us in the trucking industry want and strive for safety. That wish becomes something worth celebrating when it’s engineered to work. Turning aspiration into achievement is what J.B. Hunt’s Million Mile program is all about.

Safety has been a core value and integral part of J.B. Hunt’s history, and the idea behind its Million Mile program, established 30 years ago, was natural enough: recognize drivers who achieve one million safe miles without a preventable collision.

What set it apart from a simple incentive was the seriousness of the program and the substance with which it was packaged. Anyone in our industry knows reaching that million-mile safety milestone is no small feat: It can take anywhere from seven to ten years to drive one million safe miles. It’s a fond wish, but if wishes were horsepower, we’d all ride with impunity.

At J.B. Hunt, what might have been a simple recognition program became much more. It established standards of excellence for all employees to strive toward. It institutionalized the idea that safety is everyone’s responsibility and that excellence has its reward. It integrated and incentivized proficiencies and competencies like focus, consistency, real professionalism, and a commitment to doing the job right in every way and every day.

Result: Since 1996, more than 5,000 drivers have been honored with the Million Mile safe driving award. Many have gone far beyond that initial milestone, achieving two, three, four, and even five million safe miles without a preventable collision. In response, J.B. Hunt has awarded more than $40 million in safe-driving bonuses through the Million Mile program, reinforcing the value it places on safety and the people who make it possible.

Today, the Million Mile program and its annual celebration remain the cornerstone of J.B. Hunt’s safety culture. Every driver who earns this recognition helps carry forward a tradition that has inspired generations of professional drivers across the company. Their accomplishments serve as a reminder that safety is not achieved through a single initiative or moment in time. It’s built mile by mile, day by day, through the actions of people who take pride in their work and understand the responsibility that comes with it.

In 2026, J.B. Hunt celebrated its third consecutive year of record safety performance based on DOT preventable collision results. That’s a testament to a legacy of investing in people and raising their own standards and ambitions day after day…the good kind of impact that strengthens the culture and keeps the company rolling forward to bigger and better things.