On this episode of Net-Zero Carbon, Evan Pohaski, CEO of freight carrier JLE Industries, joins Tyler Cole, director of carbon intelligence at FreightWaves, to discuss environmental, social and governance opportunities in the flatbed sector.
JLE is leading the charge for carriers through emission-reduction pilot projects and improved visibility solutions. Pohaski and Cole unpack how ESG initiatives can be used to separate the leaders from the laggards in freight and logistics.
“Sustainability for us has to do with building long-term resiliency into the model. It’s about increasing the value proposition to the customers while creating a better sense of purpose,” Pohaski said.
More than 70% of JLE’s primary customers have ESG mandates, so JLE is working on helping those companies improve their ESG metrics. Cole and Pohaski discussed how economics and safety are considered table stakes, and ESG impacts are starting to be considered in the same way.
“Safety and personnel are nonnegotiables,” Cole said. “It feels like now a lot of these environmental issues that have been externalized for so long are starting to become table stakes in certain industries, and I think trucking is going to be one of those in the near future.”
JLE is in the exploratory stage of figuring out its ESG impacts and what the economic impacts would be for investing in more sustainable technologies, Pohaski said. The company is focused on software solutions for more efficient routing.
Cole said, “Let’s all work really, really hard on divorcing this idea of environmental concern from any sort of political stance because we all get to live on the same planet.”
Some of the biggest companies, including steel and building material customers of JLE, are especially interested in ESG investments. JLE is looking at an array of solutions for different customers and scenarios that could be embedded into the company’s current offerings.
Read: Capturing carbon from semi trucks — Net-Zero Carbon
JLE made a sizable investment in Remora’s technology, but it will allow JLE to test a green solution more quickly, Pohaski said. Remora’s technology can capture up to 80% of carbon that is emitted from trucks, and the captured carbon can be used for things like concrete production. JLE has committed to using Remora’s carbon capture technology on five units.
“Part of our mission is to build a resilient logistical backbone for tomorrow,” Pohaski said.
View all of FreightWaves’ Net-Zero Carbon episodes and sustainability stories.
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