The United States trucking industry increased its share of the nation's freight pool, hauling more goods than ever in 2005, the American Trucking Associations reported.
ATA's American Trucking Trends 2005-2006, an almanac on US trucking, reports that the trucking industry hauled 68.9% of the total volume of freight transported in the United States in 2005. This equates to an all-time high carrying load of 10.7 billion tons, and $623 billion in revenue, representing 84.3% of the nation's freight bill.
American Trucking Trends shows that trucking's record numbers mirrored the performance of the US economy, which “reached new heights” in 2005. More than 26 million trucks of all classes played a part in reaching the forecast milestone. Of this number, 2.7 million were typical Class 8 tractor-trailer combinations operated by 565,000 interstate motor carriers.
Class 8 trucks drove 117.8 billion miles of the total 388 billion miles of all weight classes used for business purposes in 2004. The nation's truck fleet consumed 51.4 billion gallons of fuel, both diesel and gasoline. The trucking industry is on pace to spend nearly $100 billion on diesel fuel alone this year, up from $87.7 billion in 2005. Commercial trucks paid $32.8 billion in federal and state highway-user taxes in 2004.
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