J. B. Hunt

J.B. hunt transport is a logistics management service and integrated transportation solutions for major corporations. J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., one of the largest transportation logistics companies in North America, provides safe and reliable transportation services to a diverse group of customers throughout the continental United States, Canada and Mexico. Utilizing an integrated, multimodal approach, they provide capacity-oriented solutions centred on delivering customer value and industry-leading service. 

They were incorporated in Arkansas on August 10, 1961, and have been a publicly held company since its initial public offering in 1983. Their service offerings include transportation of full truckload freight, which they directly transport utilizing their company-controlled revenue equipment and company drivers or independent contractors. They also have arrangements with most of the major North American rail carriers to transport truckload freight in containers and trailers. They also provide customized freight movement, revenue equipment, labour and systems services that are tailored to meet individual customers' requirements and typically involve long-term contracts. 

Their customer base is extremely diverse and includes a large number of Fortune 500 companies. Their ability to offer multiple services, utilizing their four business segments and a full complement of logistics services through third parties, represents a competitive advantage. They believe this unique operating strategy can add value to customers and increase their profits and returns to stockholders.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services was founded by Johnnie Bryan Hunt and Johnnie D. Hunt on August 10, 1961, and is headquartered in Lowell, AR.“ While our company has significantly evolved since 1961, one thing has remained the same – our scroll logo."

Looking for a way to expand his fledgling trucking company, Hunt tried to gain entrance into the dry goods segment of the industry, obtaining authorization to do so from an Atlanta company in 1971. When the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, Johnnie Hunt and others were able to take advantage of the free market. Kent explained that about 18 percent of the United States economy was attributed to inventory and transportation costs. Bergant's prophecy was fulfilled with the passage of the Motor Carrier Act.

They did not sell the rice hull business until 1983 when the company went public. By this year, J.B. Hunt became a publicly held company and has grown into the 3rd largest trucking firm in the United States. Johnelle and J.B. Hunt stand in front of one of their trucks in 1988. After visiting them in Lowell, he invited Johnnie Hunt and then-President Kirk Thompson to see how it could work by riding a passenger car on a freight train from Chicago to Kansas City. In an attempt to attract more new drivers and reduce accidents, the company also opened up a driving school in Lowell in 1988, offering its students free tuition and a job guaranteed upon graduation. By the next year, J.B. Hunt Transport began partnering with railroads to offer intermodal service.

In 1990, the company added a flatbed division to its repertoire, expanding its customer base to businesses, such as Reynolds Metals, that wished to ship materials too large for closed vans. In 1990, after acquiring the requisite authority to haul freight in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia two years earlier, Hunt joined forces with the Mexican trucking firm Fletes Sotelo to form Hunt de Mexico. In 1992, Hunt de Mexico improved the efficiency of its operations by signing an agreement with Transportation Maritima Mexican, Mexico's largest maritime steamship company.

J.B. Hunt's commitment to intermodal development, technological innovation, foreign market expansion&mdash well as its long-held devotion to customer service&mdash-abled the company to surpass the $1 billion mark in sales in 1993, only ten years after going public. The company introduced a dedicated service. Expected to generate nearly half of the company's total revenues by 1995, this hybrid form of transportation unified trucks, railroads, and sometimes cargo ships into one transportation system, so that shippers did not have to pack and unpack their cargo each time the mode of transit changed.

The Arkansas Business Hall of Fame inducted them as a couple in 2001. Though Johnnie Hunt died in 2006, Johnelle Hunt and their two children will attend the council's annual conference in Florida to accept the award on his behalf Tuesday.

“We continuously look for new ways that our people, process and technology can be used to move freight transportation forward.”

“Creating the most efficient transportation network in North America.”