For Polaris Transportation, sustainability isn’t separate from business performance. It’s part of it. That was the message from Dave Cox, CEO of Polaris Transport Group, when he sat down with trucknews.com and Today’s Trucking editorial director James Menzies to talk about the company’s comprehensive sustainability action plan.

Polaris recently formalized its environmental, social and governance, or ESG, strategy — but the journey to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly operation didn’t start in a boardroom.

Cox: My daughter was going to the University of Guelph at the time, and she was in commerce and sustainability. And she would natter to me when I was at home having dinner. Some of the things resonated with me that, you know, with ESG. And I knew that I wanted to do more. Personally, I wanted to do more. And I recognized the fact that being in transportation, we weren’t doing enough. Quite frankly, we were doing things, but we weren’t categorizing as ESG. So she was able to connect Polaris with Dr Audrey Jamal at the University of Guelph Lang School of Business.

That conversation led Polaris to partner with Dr. Jamal to build a formal ESG framework. What they discovered surprised them.

Cox: And it was refreshing for me to understand that I knew a little bit more than I thought I did initially. And when Dr. Jamal said that, David, you guys are doing a lot. You just don’t understand. It’s actually in the buckets of ESG. And it was really kind of the spark that got it, got us going, got us thinking about it more.

Together with Dr. Jamal, Polaris developed a holistic plan highlighting their corporate duties to protect the planet, take care of the people across their company and communities, while working with ethical, environmentally conscious partners. To develop and execute such an ambitious plan, Cox realized he needed a specialist.

This is how Fulya Karakas-Akgun, a sustainability professional, came on board to lead the initiative, backed by the newly formed Polaris Sustainability Task Force.

Karakas-Akgun: First of all, I’m very thankful for the work that is done by Professor Jamal, because the most important thing she achieved was to, first, raise awareness in the company and build the buy-in. Because it’s very, very important to have the executive leadership’s buy in – first Dave’s and the rest of our executive leadership. This is very important, because when they don’t support it, whatever I do, I need approvals, I need budget.

But building a sustainability strategy across a trucking company — with drivers on the road and staff across multiple locations — requires broader engagement.

Cox: We had conversations with everyone at Polaris, whether you were on the dock, in the driving community, or among executives. And I think ESG resonates with a lot of people, and they just may not know it. It really wasn’t that hard. We had some surveys we put out asking to find out what’s important for our stakeholders, be it our employees, our partners, or other government organizations as well.

Karakas-Akgun: Decarbonizing your fleet, making your fleet more environmentally friendly, it doesn’t happen in one day. It requires big financial investments and time, also. But there are things that you can do, like retrofits, or, I don’t know, putting on low rolling resistance tires, and, for example, telematics devices that measure your fuel efficiency. So, looking at our fleet, our trucks already have most of those sustainable retrofits like that support fuel economy, and we have policies in place.

The company already spec’d fuel-efficient trucks, equipped with roll rolling resistance tires. Drivers were already being trained on efficient driving techniques, but Polaris then developed its own driver scorecards to recognize top performers. And telematics enabled that, along with ability to track performance and identify opportunities for coaching and improvement. As the team puts it, what gets measured gets managed. The company also wants to upgrade its fleet.

Karakas-Akgun: But as I said, it requires more time, more planning and investments, and it requires some infrastructure as well. For example, we were looking at hydrogen and EV trucks. It’s not just up to us. Infrastructure should be in place too, so it kind of slows you down too. Well, I hope we’ll get there when the infrastructure is ready.

Polaris has purchased a fleet of new electric forklifts for its warehouse operations, and plans to power its facility with on-site solar and wind energy. When asked if there’s a tangible return on investment for such initiatives, Cox said that’s not what the effort is all about.

Cox: I think you can do good and do well at the same time. And to me, that’s a valuable business proposition, and I think that we find our own efficiencies. We create our own efficiencies by ESG and ESG initiatives…the selfish aspect, the ESG branding, which we certainly don’t do for this reason, [is that] it gets a lot of attention, and it resonates with people, right?

So again, as I mentioned earlier, we’re now connecting with people that, we may not have had their ear before, but because we’re doing similar things and we have similar shared values, we’re having stronger conversations. That’s, I guess, a selfish perspective, but it’s a real perspective, right? And again, back to the triple bottom line — people, planet, profit. You can do good and do well at the same time.