Trucker Fun Facts

• There are currently about 15.5 million trucks operating on US roads and highways.
• Three and a half million men, and about 200,000 women, are what are called “long haul truck drivers” in the US.
• Among the top good transported are clothing, food, furniture, electrical products and machinery parts.
• Trucker’s account for 12.8 percent of all the fuel purchased in the US.
• The average commercial 18-wheeler uses about 20,500 gallons of fuel each year. You and I use about 500 gallons a year in the family car.
• Truckers generate about $650 billion dollars a year or about 5 percent of the American GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
• Regulations from the EPA have cut exhaust output from trucks and off road equipment by 95 percent over the past 19 years.
• Today it would take 60 trucks to equal the exhaust emissions of a single truck in 1988.
• Over the road trucker’s mean salary is about $44,500 (Source: Career Builder)
• Seventy percent of all freight transported in the US is done by truck.
• The vast majority of trucking companies in the US are small businesses not big corporations.
• Four common causes of truck accidents are going too fast for conditions, problems with the truck’s brakes, driver error, and driver fatigue.
• Most truck accidents occur during lane changes.
• One out of every 14 American jobs, more than 9 million, belong to the trucking industry.
• Of every dollar a small business spends on shipping, .82¢ goes to shipping by truck.
• Seventy-five percent of American communities are 100 percent dependent on trucks for delivery of goods and services to their cities. No automatic alt text available.