This could be a pivotal year for the trucking industry as we navigate a new regulatory environment, uncertainty surrounding the impact of tariffs, and reexamine commitments to sustainability.
Breakthrough, a provider of sustainable fuel and freight solutions for shippers, surveyed 500 transportation decision makers, both shippers and fleets, about their plans for adapting to market and economic changes and the impact of those changes on their sustainability efforts.
There were a bunch of takeaways from the company’s 2025 State of Transportation Report. A couple of them caught my eye. The first was that 87% of shippers have set long-term sustainability-related transportation goals for this year. I was pleasantly surprised to see that so many shippers were still making sustainability a priority, especially as the goals of the current administration are different from those of the Biden administration, and some of the regulatory pressure and financial incentives for moving in a more sustainable manner will no longer be in play. Full disclosure, this number was down from 2024 when 98% of shippers said they had sustainability initiatives. Still given the current environment, I think 87% is a good number.
Some of the things shippers plan to do are achieve a specific percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, work toward achieving net-zero emissions, and work toward achieving carbon neutrality. Some of the ways they plan to do it are by tracking scope 3 transportation emissions, contracting with more sustainable fleets, and increasing the use of alternative energy.
These sentences from the report really resonated with me: “But no matter the root cause, delaying or deemphasizing sustainability is a shortsighted approach for U.S. shippers … Plus, pulling back on sustainability could leave shippers at a disadvantage relative to competitors that continue to prioritize sustainability in their freight strategy.”
See also: Shippers are reevaluating costs, carrier partnerships ahead of market flip
At NACFE, we’ve been saying the same thing to fleets about the need for them to begin exploring alternatives to diesel-powered vehicles. And this report found that fleets indeed are “taking a multidimensional approach to emissions reduction.” They are doing this by replacing older equipment with newer truck models that are more fuel efficient, deploying fuel efficiency technologies on their vehicles, optimizing their routing, and focusing on maintenance to ensure their vehicles are operating at peak levels.
And while both shippers and fleets say they are focused on reducing costs, they see cost reduction as one of the potential benefits of their sustainability efforts.
A related statistic was that 89% of fleets say they are experiencing delays in transitioning to more sustainable fuels. We heard fleet leaders say this to us in Run on Less – Electric and more definitively in Run on Less – Electric DEPOT, so this was not a surprise to me.
As an industry, we have to do better at bringing down the cost of these new technologies and speeding up the process of getting infrastructure in place that will allow fleets to move more quickly to alternative fuels.
I am buoyed up by the results of the survey, and I continue to be optimistic about a clean freight future.
