Last week I wrote an article from a presentation given at the Wyoming Farm Bureau Legislative Meeting, on current issues in the trucking industry. The lady had a pile of facts and figures included, and since trucking has a major impact on most industries, agriculture included, I feel they are relevant.
The trucking industry is a major U.S. employer, with 7.3 million people employed in the trucking related jobs in 2008. Nearly 3.4 million of those people were actual truck drivers.
Ninety-six percent of trucking companies operate fewer than 20 trucks, and 88 percent operate six trucks or less. It's a small business industry.
In 2011, over 69 percent of Wyoming commodities relied exclusively on trucks to move their goods, and more than 80 percent of the commodities in the U.S. depended solely on trucks for the delivery of their goods.
Truck movement of manufactured freight at the national level is 81.76 percent. In 2010, Wyoming saw 16.3 million tons of inbound manufactured freight, and trucks moved 13 million of those tons.
In 2009, commercial trucks accounted for about 10 percent of all vehicle miles driven nationwide. In Wyoming, trucks drove 2,064,000 miles, about 22 percent of all miles driven within the state that year, and paid 66 percent of all the taxes and fees owed by Wyoming highway users.
The trucking industry deals with anti-trucking groups. The one that stood out the most to me is called "Parents Against Hired Truckers." This group, along with several others, has been causing serious efforts in the Department of Transportation's (DOT) efforts to revamp the Hours of Service Rules, a critical component of any trucking business, for years.
