U-Haul Wins 2025 Smart Energy Decisions’ Innovation Award for Circularity

U-Haul has received the 2025 Smart Energy Decisions’ Innovation Award for Circularity, honoring the Company’s longstanding commitment to reuse programs.

At the SED Awards on Sept. 17 in Tucson, Ariz., U-Haul was recognized for decades of implementing circular economy principles in product design, materials recovery, and closed-loop systems that significantly reduce resource extraction, energy use, and emissions.

Three primary strategies and initiatives U-Haul uses to promote circularity are adaptive building reuse, sustainable modular storage (SMS), and the Take-A-Box Leave-A-Box program. 

“We’re in an energy-saving business because, fundamentally, U-Haul is specialization of ownership and then sharing use amongst a large group of people,” stated Joe Shoen, CEO of U-Haul Holding Company. “We believe very strongly that as the timeframe extends out that good business and energy efficiency merge. Everyone, from our lenders to trading agencies to the regulators, are all looking for a short-term result. But it is a long-term situation, and it requires a long-term commitment.”

Dr. Allan Yang, U-Haul Chief Scientist and Sustainability Officer, accepted the Innovation Award at the Smart Energy Decisions event. He was joined by U-Haul Co. of Tucson president Billy Longenbaugh, U-Haul Co. of Southeast Arizona president Alexis Reeves, and fellow U-Haul Sustainability Team Members Brigitte Bavousett and William Kinsey.

Yang noted the Company’s “decades of commitment to circularity, starting with our CEO Joe Shoen's fundamental policy for adaptive reuse in U-Haul property development.”

Sustainable Solutions: Decades of Dedication

Since 2007, U-Haul property acquisition criterion has prioritized adaptive reuse, converting existing and often vacant buildings over new construction. SMS, pioneered in the 1970s, involves repurposing retired U-Haul truck van bodies into self-storage units to serve customers across North America. In U-Haul centers, Take-A-Box Leave-A-Box reuse displays allow customers to freely exchange over one million moving boxes annually, a responsible program that trumpets purpose over profit.

“Each of these U-Haul initiatives proves that circularity isn’t just about keeping materials out of landfills,” Yang explained. “It's about the massive energy savings when we don't have to extract, manufacture and transport new materials from scratch.

“It comes down to a simple truth: the most sustainable building material is the one that’s already built; the most efficient storage solution is the one that’s already manufactured; and the best box is the one that’s already made.”

Honoring the importance of collaborations, Yang thanked the U-Haul partners who saw potential where others saw waste, and noted that true innovation often means doing more with what we already have. His awards speech concluded with this crucial value: “When we work together to remove barriers and align policies, we prove that circularity scales.”

A panel of judges chose U-Haul as the sole recipient in the SED Awards’ Circularity category.

During the ceremony, the judges commented: “This project is truly innovative and outside of the box. Some aspects of the project come at no return to U-Haul, such as the box reuse project, which demonstrates an impressive commitment to sustainability.”

Smart Energy Decisions was founded in 2016 and is dedicated to addressing the information needs of commercial and industrial electric power customers. U-Haul garnered national recognition with this award for its contributions to circular economies (cities, states and provinces) throughout North America.

About U-HAUL

Celebrating our 80th anniversary in 2025, U-Haul is the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers with more than 24,000 rental locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The U-Haul app makes it easy for customers to use U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 to access trucks anytime through the self-dispatch and -return options on their smartphones with our patented Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to 197,500 trucks, 137,200 trailers and 41,300 towing devices. U-Haul is the third largest self-storage operator in North America and offers 1,093,000 rentable storage units and 94.9 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities. U-Haul is the top retailer of propane in the U.S. and the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry. Get the U-Haul app from the App Store or Google Play.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

E-mail: publicrelations@uhaul.com

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com