Sometimes, it might seem like shelves in supermarkets, every furniture shop, every restaurant and beyond, are always filled with everything you expect, almost effortlessly. But that is nothing more than a one big and dynamic movement of America‘s giant trucking industry. Trucking moves over 70% of all the freight in the United States of America while generating hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue. As the trucking industry serves as a bridge between producers and consumers, a vital bridge of our modern-day lives, here at Paul Mark Group we believe it is more than important to participate in aiding the trucking industry, whether it’s through helping companies find qualified drivers or vice versa. And when experts say it would only take 3 days for most stores to start running out of food if long-haul truckers stopped working, you truly start to realize why trucking industry holds significance of such importance in the US. Possibly much bigger than one might have imagined!
1. Incredible Tonnage & Mileage
Almost everything you‘ll find and see in America‘s homes, supermarkets and shops are delivered exclusively by trucking industry with statistics that speak volumes and are hard to match.
Stunning Tonnage of 10.8 billion freight was moved in 2017, but even that was topped by a massive 11.49 billion tons of freight that were transported by trucks in 2018. The weight moved in 2018 represented 71.4% of total domestic tonnage shipped in the US with over 25% increased tonnage projected by 2030.
With freight movement of such scale, comes milage of over 100,00 miles a year for a single trucker, which results in almost 300 billion miles traveled by all registered trucks. Wow!
2. Companies & Employment
The U.S. Department of Transportation tells us that as of May 2019, the number of for-hire carriers totaled in 892,078 while private carriers can be counted up to 772,011. And these numbers lead us straight to the employment importance of the trucking industry.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018 there were approximately 129 million full-time jobs in the United States of America of which approximately 7.4 million were coming from the trucking industry.
That equals to around 5.8% of all American full-time workers! Even Walmart started to employ its own trucks and today has more than 8000 truckers.
3. Massive Revenues
The revenue the US trucking industry makes is simply massive and still grows every year with big significance.
While the industry generated an impressive number of $676.2 billion in 2016, the following year it leaped all the way to $700.3 billion. But if you thought that was a jump of the year, in 2018 the US trucking industry made $796.7 billion in revenue! Which represents over 80% of the nation’s freight bill in 2018.
If the US trucking industry were a nation in 2017, according to CIA Factbook, it would rank 33rd, higher than countries like Sweden, Belgium or Austria, and just slightly less than South Africa and Colombia. How about that?