Boston, August 25, 2026 – Green Century Capital Management (Green Century) presented a shareholder resolution on Thursday asking U-Haul to publish statistics about its greenhouse gas emissions, including those from its fleet of over 200,000 trucks, and its emissions reduction goals. 20% of voting shares supported the proposal.
“As is often said, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,’” said Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century. “U-Haul and its investors need emissions data to understand the company’s carbon footprint and the company’s plans to address the associated risks to investors and the climate.”
Fueling the future
The transportation industry runs on fossil fuels and had the largest emissions of any U.S. economic sector in 2025. Vehicles carrying freight on roads emit more carbon air pollution than air, rail and sea transport combined, even though road transport moves a fraction of the goods.
Unless something substantial changes, global-warming vehicle emissions will continue to contribute to more sweltering summer days and increasingly ferocious fires. Electric vehicles, which U-Haul has ignored to date, offer a powerful antidote against planet-warming pollution.
The research provider Rhodium Group predicts that between 2025 and 2040, transport will have the second-largest decline in emissions as more people adopt EVs and stop driving gas- or diesel-powered vehicles. The electrification of trucks means drivers will consume one million fewer barrels per day of fossil fuel by 2035, according to the IEA.
Electric vehicles would also benefit U-Haul’s do-it-yourself movers. As rising oil prices punish pocketbooks at the pump, it has become cheaper to fuel electric vehicles for a month than traditional gas vehicles across nearly all 50 states. There’s a side benefit for Americans’ health as well: A National Institutes of Health study also found that as electric vehicle numbers increased, so too did air quality.
U-Haul trails in sustainable transportation
U-Haul’s failure to transition to electric vehicles matches its overall record on sustainability. Unlike U-Haul’s competitors, the owner of North America’s largest fleet of rental equipment has yet to publish a sustainability report, the vehicle its peers are using to report their electrification plans and progress.
Among U-Haul’s peers, Penske Truck Leasing collaborates with manufacturers to design, test, and rent out electric vehicles and Avis Budget Group reported it had 79,000 hybrids and electric vehicles in its global fleet in 2024, helping power a 9% reduction in emissions since 2018. With the expectation of lower fuel and ownership costs supplementing sustainability in motivating consumers to choose electric, U-Haul may lose ground to competitors offering more EVs.
“U-Haul has not gone the distance to transition to clean energy,” said Green Century Shareholder Advocate Giovanna Eichner. “Measuring and reporting fleet emissions is the first step toward putting the company in the neighborhood of its competitors already miles ahead in curtailing carbon pollution.”
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