How J.B. Hunt streamlines driver communications for 22,000+ drivers

About J.B. Hunt

J.B. Hunt Transport Services is one of North America’s largest supply chain solutions providers and a Fortune 500 company. Founded in 1961 with five trucks and seven trailers, the company has grown into a $12 billion enterprise operating the largest intermodal service in North America, with more than 33,600 employees and over 22,500 truck drivers serving customers across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

J.B. Hunt operates five distinct business segments, each with specialized operations, equipment, and communication needs. Their fleet includes over 18,800 tractors and 157,000 trailers and containers.

The company has long embraced technology as a competitive advantage. Their J.B. Hunt 360 platform connects nearly one million trucks through a digital freight marketplace, and the company has made strategic investments in cloud infrastructure through partnerships with both Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, processing billions of transactions annually.

The Challenge

Coordinating real-time communication across tens of thousands of drivers, carriers, and shippers is one of the most complex operational challenges in logistics. J.B. Hunt’s teams across multiple divisions – hiring, maintenance, load status updates, and consumer engagement – each needed reliable, scalable SMS communication with drivers who spend their days on the road, away from desks and email.

Before Clerk Chat, J.B. Hunt faced several key pain points:

• Fragmented communication tools. Multiple divisions were managing driver outreach through disconnected systems, with no unified messaging platform tied to their existing Microsoft Teams environment.
• Repetitive, manual processes. Across the organization, human agents spread across the country were fielding inbound calls from carriers and shippers asking for load status updates – work that was repetitive, time-consuming, and difficult to scale.
• Scale of registration and compliance. With hundreds of phone numbers in use across the organization, getting registered for 10DLC compliance and managing number pools was a significant operational undertaking. Microsoft Teams’ native SMS limits organizations to 49 numbers per tenant with a single brand and campaign – far too restrictive for J.B. Hunt’s needs.
• Native Teams SMS fell short. Microsoft Teams’ built-in SMS capabilities lacked the enterprise features J.B. Hunt required: no shared inboxes, no multimedia messaging, no AI automation, no multi-brand campaign support, and geographic restrictions that limited flexibility.

Why Clerk Chat

J.B. Hunt evaluated Microsoft Teams’ native SMS solution but ultimately chose Clerk Chat for its enterprise-grade feature set and seamless Teams integration.

Enterprise Features That Native Teams SMS Couldn’t Match

Microsoft Teams’ built-in SMS is limited to one-on-one conversations, strips multimedia from messages, caps phone numbers at 49 per tenant, and restricts organizations to a single brand and campaign. For a company operating at J.B. Hunt’s scale – with multiple divisions, hundreds of numbers, and millions of messages – these limitations were non-starters.

Clerk Chat delivered what native Teams SMS could not:

• Unlimited phone numbers with no per-tenant caps or administrative approval required
• Shared inboxes so entire teams can collaboratively manage driver conversations
• Multi-brand, multi-campaign support enabling different divisions to run distinct messaging programs under one platform
• MMS and rich messaging for sending images, documents, and detailed updates to drivers
• AI-powered automation to handle routine inquiries and free up human agents
• CRM and system integrations connecting messaging to J.B. Hunt’s existing tech stack

Effortless Deployment via Microsoft Admin Portal

One of the biggest advantages for J.B. Hunt was how easy Clerk Chat was to deploy. As a certified Microsoft Operator Connect partner, Clerk Chat installs directly through the Microsoft Teams Admin Center. There was no complex technical integration, no custom development, and no disruption to J.B. Hunt’s existing Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure infrastructure.

IT administrators simply activated Clerk Chat through the Admin portal, assigned phone numbers to users and resource accounts, and teams were sending messages within the same Microsoft Teams environment they already used daily.

10DLC Registration and Number Pool Management at Scale

With thousands of phone numbers to register and manage, J.B. Hunt needed a partner that could handle 10DLC compliance at enterprise scale. Clerk Chat’s proprietary registration workflows streamlined the entire process – from brand registration with The Campaign Registry to individual campaign approvals – achieving approval timelines of 3-4 business days with over 98% approval rates, compared to the industry standard of up to four weeks.

Clerk Chat’s number pool management gave J.B. Hunt the flexibility to provision, assign, and manage all numbers across divisions without hitting the artificial limits imposed by native Teams SMS. Each division could operate its own campaigns while the platform handled compliance, consent management, and audit-ready recordkeeping behind the scenes.

The Solution in Action

J.B. Hunt went live with Clerk Chat on September 30, 2024. Within months, the platform became deeply embedded in daily operations across the organization.

Multi-Division Adoption

Clerk Chat serves four distinct operational areas within J.B. Hunt:

• Load Status Updates – Operations teams coordinate deliveries in real time, sending drivers timely updates and receiving confirmations without phone tag.
• Hiring & Recruitment – HR teams reach prospective drivers via text to accelerate the hiring pipeline in an industry where recruiting a single driver can require hundreds of outreach attempts.
• Maintenance – Fleet maintenance teams communicate with drivers about vehicle servicing, inspections, and scheduling.
• Consumer Engagement – Customer-facing teams provide end-user delivery updates and support through familiar SMS channels.

All of this happens inside Microsoft Teams. Agents never have to leave their primary workspace to send a text, check a conversation thread, or collaborate with a teammate on a driver inquiry.

"If it's got the label of AI, we're POCing it somewhere."

J.B. Hunt Transport Services

Looking Ahead: AI Agents for Load Status Automation

J.B. Hunt and Clerk Chat are expanding the partnership to tackle one of the organization’s biggest pain points: the flood of inbound calls from carriers and shippers asking for load status updates. Today, this work is handled by human agents distributed across the country – a repetitive, time-consuming process that doesn’t scale.

The next phase introduces Clerk AI Agents, integrated with J.B. Hunt’s 360 platform and Genesys contact center, to handle end-to-end load status conversations automatically. The AI will capture shipment identifiers, pull real-time status via API, and route inquiries to the correct division – freeing human agents to focus on higher-value work while reducing wait times for carriers and shippers.

Results

Since deploying Clerk Chat in September 2024, J.B. Hunt has transformed how its teams communicate with drivers and external stakeholders:

• Faster response times. Real-time SMS coordination through Teams replaced slower, fragmented communication methods, keeping drivers focused and deliveries on schedule.
• Operational efficiency at scale. 1,000+ users across four divisions now manage nearly 3 million messages through a single platform, with shared inboxes enabling seamless team collaboration.
• Compliance without complexity. All phone numbers were 10DLC-registered through Clerk Chat’s streamlined workflows, with full audit trails, consent management, and carrier compliance handled automatically.
• Zero disruption deployment. The platform was activated through the Microsoft Teams Admin Center and integrated into J.B. Hunt’s existing Microsoft and Google Cloud infrastructure with no downtime or custom development.
• A foundation for AI. The partnership is expanding into AI-powered voice and messaging agents to automate high-volume, repetitive inquiries – starting with load status updates.