Preserving wood with coal-tar creosote, an organic bioproduct of coke and steel manufacturing processes, is a sustainable and efficient way to transform wood into high-performing infrastructure. Creosote naturally distills out of coal at high heats and extends the life of another organic material: raw wood. It can also be recycled at the end of its useful life by being burned for fuel.
But these efficiencies of organic wood preservative don’t end with the railroad itself. This sustainable preservative sets the stage for a high-performing economy. As the backbone of freight rail, creosote supports the intermodal transport of American goods, helping move them seamlessly between ships, trains and trucks to the doorsteps of consumers. Creosote-treated freight railroads—by reducing prices, increasing output and improving services—don’t just make environmental sense, they also make business sense.
As the backbone of freight rail, creosote supports the intermodal transport of American goods, helping move them seamlessly between ships, trains and trucks to the doorsteps of consumers.
Retailers Vertically Integrate Through Freight
Despite their very different eras, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon and Doug McMillon’s Walmart are actually following in the footsteps of America’s famous 19th century railroad tycoons. Like Rockefeller and Carnegie, both Amazon’s and Walmart’s decisions over the last decade illustrate the companies’ understanding of the critical importance of railroad transportation within their supply chains. When logistics companies like FedEx, J.B. Hunt, UPS, Schneider and USPS could not deliver on the timelines they had promised their customers—especially during the busy holiday season—Bezos and McMillon took their retail companies into the transportation business. They cut out the “middle men,” saving costs and improving service.
While industrialists from the 19th century used rail to create access to entirely new geographies, today they are using rail to increase the variety of products available and reduce delivery times. Just like Carnegie, they vertically integrated their supply chains, so the panoply of products available on Amazon.com and Walmart.com can be delivered to Americans’ doorsteps in record time. Walmart has been in the trucking logistics business since the 1970s, and its ability to replenish supplies at distribution centers for decades has been key to its success. The online retailer Amazon, however, created its first fleet of semi-trucks with Amazon’s “Everything and the kitchen sink” motto only ten years ago in 2015, and its blue delivery vans with an iconic arrow on the sides followed suit just three years later.
While industrialists from the 19th century used rail to create access to entirely new geographies, today they are using rail to increase the variety of products available and reduce delivery times.
But did you know that the new frontier for the logistics company is rail? Starting in 2018 and 2019, Walmart and Amazon, respectively, experimented with purchasing their own intermodal shipping containers and expanding their use of freight rail to keep their fulfillment centers and brick-and-mortar stores stocked.
Environmentally Friendly Freight: From Sustainable Crossties to The Climate Pledge
Fittingly, Amazon’s investment in sustainable creosote-treated freight railroads was spurred by the company committing to reducing its environmental impact. In 2019, Amazon established The Climate Pledge with 550 other companies from around the world to “reach net-zero carbon across [its] global operations by 2040.”
Amazon’s first step towards this goal was to acquire a batch of 250 shipping containers, or “intermodal containers,” which transfer between different modes of transportation (i.e., ships, trains and trucks)—they simply lift off a ship and can be placed on a freight rail car without unloading any goods. By 2022, Amazon’s fleet of intermodal containers stood at 5,000 containers, primarily serving the West Coast, which move between trucks and freight trains at Amazon Relay locations. Just three years later that number had quadrupled to more than 20,000 intermodal containers, according to Amazon Freight.
For both wood preservatives and locomotives, less is more: less waste, less man-made materials, and less fuel.
In 2018, Walmart’s intermodal pilot program added 14,100 intermodal containers to its transportation fleet, specifically to move goods between Southern California and Texas. The pilot was successful and then incorporated its freight rail container fleet into the rest of its U.S. operations. J.B. Hunt, Walmart’s longtime logistics partner, was also eyeing freight as strategic source of growth, and set a goal of growing its intermodal fleet to 150,000 by 2027.
In 2024, J.B. Hunt convinced Walmart to sell its new fleet to J.B. Hunt as part of a multiyear contract that would put the logistics company back in control of Walmart’s shipping operations. Although Walmart no longer owns or directly operates the intermodal containers, it is still using the fleet it invested in, just under J.B. Hunt’s management. The intermodal container pilot expanded both the retail giant’s and J.B. Hunt’s use of freight rail.
While these shipping containers can be placed on trailers and hauled by semi-trucks, Amazon and J.B. Hunt/Walmart are both increasing the share of containers that they place on rail, to reduce their carbon footprints. J.B. Hunt believes every over-the-road shipment it can convert to rail will reduce its carbon footprint by 60 percent. This is possible because, like the preserved crossties undergirding them, trains make efficient use of energy.
Freight locomotives emit only a quarter of the greenhouse gas emitted by long-haul trucks because their design requires less energy output and locomotives can transport many more containers at once. With many more axels than trucks, trains also save energy by increasing weight distribution and reducing wheel resistance. Recent innovations like diesel-electric trains and regenerative braking can even store energy generated by locomotives and reuse it, like hybrid automobiles.
For both wood preservatives and locomotives, less is more: less waste, less man-made materials, and less fuel. Together, creosote-treated ties and freight trains free up time, energy and money which can then be directed to improving service quality.
Better Logistics for All
Amazon Logistics’ expansion into rail immediately reduced its average delivery times from 3.39 in 2018 to under two days in 2019. In the years since, the company has tripled its package delivery volume from 2 billion in 2019 to an estimated 6.3 billion in 2025. Only three years after purchasing intermodal containers, Amazon Logistics started offering its logistics service to other businesses, directly competing with the major carriers like FedEx and UPS—any business can now use the Amazon Freight logistics system to deliver its products. In 2024, Amazon’s market share came second only to that of USPS, after coming in fourth behind USPS, UPS and FedEx in 2019.
Walmart, a primarily brick-and-mortar operation, has also drastically dropped its delivery times for its online orders due to its expansion into freight rail and increasingly sophisticated uses of GPS and fulfillment technology. Walmart recently announced that it would guarantee 95 percent of Americans 3-hour delivery windows by the end of 2025.
The sheer scale of these retail giants expanding into energy-efficient freight rail—and its creosote-treated wooden infrastructure—is expected to continue to increase demand for both intercontinental and short-rail freight in the near future. The seemingly overnight transformation of Amazon from online retailer to vertically integrated retail-logistics company was made possible by the addition of rail to Amazon Logistics’ portfolio. More traditional retailers like Walmart and mainstream logistics companies like J.B. Hunt are also finding creative ways to leverage freight rail in their complex operations. It may feel strange at first to see 21st-century online retailers represented on century-old railroads—but, then again, efficiency never goes out of style.
Note: This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of the Railway Tie Association’s Crossties Magazine.