ATA’s American Trucking Trends points to vibrant trucking industry

It is no surprise that when it comes to freight transportation market share, trucking leads the pack. But what can be surprising is by how much of a margin the trucking sector outpaces its freight transportation brethren.

This was prominently highlighted in the 2012 edition of the American Trucking Associations “ATA American Trucking Trends,” which the ATA released this week.

As usual, this book is replete with interesting and helpful information and data pertaining to the trucking industry. Getting back to my aforementioned point about the sector’s market share, American Trucking Trends stated that in 2011 trucking moved $603.9 billion in freight, which represents more than 80 percent of all freight transportation revenue. What’s more, ATA said that freight weighed 9.2 billion tons or 67 percent of all freight by weight.

Here are a few more fun facts from this year’s edition:
-trucking employs 6.8 million people, including more than 3 million drivers. Of those drivers, 4.6 percent are women and 32.6 percent are minorities;
-90 percent of motor carriers operating six or fewer trucks and 97.2 percent operating fewer than 20;
-Class 6-8 trucks traveled 131.2 billion miles in 2010, and all trucks regardless of size traveled 397.8 billion miles; and
?in 2011, trucks consumed 37.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel.

ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said in a statement that this year’s edition is the “singularly most important guide to trucking facts and figures,” adding that ‘the information in this year’s edition clearly indicates that trucking is the driving force behind our great, and improving, economy. Safe, reliable and efficient motor carriers enable businesses throughout the entire supply chain to keep inventories lean, thereby saving the economy billions of dollars each year.”

All good and valid points there to say the least, it is safe to say. While I embrace all modes of freight transportation from my logistics editor perch, I would be hard-pressed to imagine what the current state of affairs would be for supply chains and logistics operations if there were not a strong, cohesive, and fluid trucking network in place.