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What is the U.S. market-size (TAM) for the Truck freight shipping industry?
Hello! Thanks for your question about the US market-size (TAM) for the truck freight shipping industry. The short answer is that the industry as a whole was worth $726.4bn in 2015, with "other foodstuffs", nonmetal mineral products, "other agriculture products", base metals, and mixed freight being the most significant segments by total ton-miles.
Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
To answer this question I investigated at a combination of industry resources and government databases.
OVERVIEW
In 2015 revenues from the trucking industry in the US reached $726.4bn, representing 81.5% of the country's total freight activity. As of mid-2015 there were 586,014 for-hire trucking companies; 747,781 private company fleets; and 144,170 other trucking firms. The large majority (90.8%) of trucking companies in the US are small, operating 6 or fewer trucks, with just 2.7% having 20 or more trucks.
BREAKDOWN
In terms of revenue breakdown by segment, this information was not readily available; however, I was able to provide a strong estimate based on trucking data from the Centre for Transportation Analysis (CTA), which is funded by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Federal Highway Administration.
The CTA provides comprehensive freight information for the US by mode of transport, including value of goods, tonnage, and ton-miles. In order to divide the total revenues by segment, it makes the most sense to determine the percentage of each market segment by ton-miles, as this will rule out discrepancies in terms of product value and also reflect the total distances covered (i.e. the time period a trucking company is engaged). While this is not an exact method (as it does not accurately reflect higher revenues associated with transporting some products such as refrigerated or hazardous materials), it does provide a good overview of each market segment.
According to this approach, the top-5 market segments in 2015 were as follows:
Please see this spreadsheet for a full list of all market segments, and this description document from the US Census Bureau describing what is included in each product category.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, trucking in the US is a major component of the economy and was worth just over $725bn in 2015. In that year, the most transported category of goods was "other foodstuffs" (9.29%), followed by nonmetal mineral products (5.87%), "other agricultural products" (5.27%), base metals (4.96%), and mixed freight (4.39%).
One additional note, if you are interested in seeing how each segment has changed over time, it is possible to get this data from CTA data query tool for the years 2012-15, as well as forecasts into the future.
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