Trucks carried 65.5% of an estimated $1 trillion in freight that crossed the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico in 2016, according to the Department of Transportation’s website.
That number is based on the value of the freight and is a higher share than a year earlier and a decade earlier in 2006, according to DOT. Rail (15.5%), vessel (5.5%), pipeline (4.6%), and air (3.9%) carried the remaining share of cross border freight, DOT notes.
Trucks carried 53.5 percent of the $278.1 billion of 2016 imports from Canada, followed by rail, 21.1 percent; pipeline, 13.6 percent; vessel, 4.1 percent; and air, 4.0 percent. The numbers changed somewhat from a decade earlier. In 2006, trucks carried 49.4 percent of the $303.4 billion of imports from Canada, followed by rail, 20.8 percent; pipeline, 17.8 percent; vessel, 5.3 percent; and air, 2.8 percent.
On the southern border, trucks carried 72.5 percent of the $294.2 billion of 2016 imports from Mexico, followed by rail, 16.5 percent; vessel, 6.2 percent; air, 2.4 percent; and pipeline, 0.1 percent. In 2006, trucks carried 63.8 percent of the $198.3 billion of imports from Mexico, followed by vessel, 19.6 percent; rail, 13.0 percent; air, 2.1 percent; and pipeline, less than 0.1 percent.
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