Industry Fast Facts

Economic Impact

• •Trucking is the industry America depends on most to receive its goods, moving 11.18 billion tons of freight in 2023, according to preliminary figures.
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• •More than 80% of U.S. communities rely exclusively on trucking to meet their freight transportation needs.
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Career Opportunity

• •Trucking employed 8.5 million people in industry-related jobs, including 3.55 million professional drivers in 2023.
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• •Nearly 1 in every 14 working adults in the U.S. is employed in a trucking-related job.
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•This essential industry is among the top five most common occupations in 28 states and is the most common job in Wyoming and North Dakota.

Trucking is one of the few roads in today’s economy that leads to the middle class without requiring a college degree and the debt that comes with one. According to the American Trucking Associations’ latest driver compensation study:

• •Truckload drivers earned a median annual amount of $76,420 in 2023 – a 10% increase over the previous two years.
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• •Linehaul less-than-truckload drivers earned a median annual amount of $94,525 in 2023, while local LTL drivers earned a median of $80,680.
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• •Median annual compensation for drivers at private carriers has risen 12% since 2021, reaching $95,114 in 2023.
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• •Leased-on independent contractors for truckload carriers were paid an annual median amount of $186,016 in 2023.
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Environment

•Trucking has been one of the U.S. economy’s leading industries on environmental responsibility, cutting tailpipe pollutants by more than 98% over the last three decades.

•It takes 60 of today’s clean-diesel trucks to produce the emissions of a single truck built in 1988.

•The industry partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration on regulations in 2011 and 2016 that are cutting CO2 emissions by 1.37 billion tons and reducing oil consumption by 2.5 billion barrels by 2027.

•Partnering with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the SmartWay program, the industry eliminated tons of pollutants and carbon from the air and reduced fuel consumption by billions of gallons through industry-led, voluntary best practices in fuel-economy, sustainability, and energy efficiency.

•The industry phased out sulfur in diesel fuel in 2006, reducing sulfur dioxide emissions to virtually zero.

Safety

The trucking industry has no higher priority than safety, proactively investing $14 billion in training and technology every year to prevent highway accidents. Today’s trucks come equipped with advanced safety technologies like automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning systems, forward-collision and blind-spot warnings, and more.

These crash-prevention technologies help professional truck drivers safely navigate America’s vast and often congested roadways so that factories can keep running, store shelves remain stocked, and everyday necessities are delivered to doorsteps across the country.

While government data shows a large majority of fatal crashes involving large commercial trucks are caused by passenger vehicles, the trucking industry has called upon the federal government to conduct an updated large-truck causation study. This would allow the industry to improve safety technologies and help policymakers more precisely identify the root causes of crashes, including the rising prevalence of impaired and distracted driving amongst the motoring public, to better develop national roadway safety strategies.

Trucking is committed to the goal of zero highway fatalities, which is why the industry is leading efforts to combat aggressive and distracted driving by all motorists. Distracted driving is a leading contributor to roadway deaths and injuries in the United States and estimated to play a role in nearly one-third of all fatal crashes. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2020, there were 3,142 deaths and an estimated additional 324,652 injured on US roadways because of distracted driving.

The industry is also calling attention to the safety risks posed by state and federal initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that, between 2000 and 2018, crash deaths involving marijuana more than doubled, from 9% to 21.5%. Separate studies revealed that state-level marijuana legalization “was associated with a 6.5% increase in injury crash rates and a 2.3% increase in fatal crash rates. Immediately following Canada’s 2018 legalization of marijuana, the country’s emergency rooms saw a 94% increase in the rate of marijuana-involved traffic injuries.