11 incredible facts about the $700 billion US trucking industry

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018 there were about 129 million full-time jobs in America. That same year, approximately 7.4 million people were employed by the trucking industry. That means about 5.8% of all American full-time workers had a job thanks to trucking.

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In recent years, Walmart has been turning away from third-party contracts and employing its own truckers, including a hiring surge of more than 1,400 new drivers brought on in 2018 and hundreds more so far in 2019. Walmart truckers earn on average nearly $88,000 per year, CBS reported.

According to American Trucking Associations, US trucks moved 10.8 billion tons of freight in 2017.

That equates to about 30 pounds worth of goods for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Trucking accounts for the vast majority of freight in America, with trucks carrying almost 71% of the tonnage moved about the country. That far surpasses trains, boats, and air when it comes to moving cargo around the nation.

Trucking is a surprisingly egalitarian industry, with 40.6% of all trucking jobs held by minorities. This far outpaces the national average when all jobs are compared — overall, minorities hold just 22% of jobs in this country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is charged with managing the laws and regulations that control trucking in America. But not one of its four administrators has ever held a commercial driver's license or had any background in the trucking industry.

It might seem like food supplies on supermarket shelves are boundless, always there when you need them. But in fact, experts predict that most grocery stores would start running out of food just three days after long-haul truckers stopped working.

In 2018, the American Trucking Associations released a statement saying the industry needed to hire almost 900,000 more drivers to meet the growing demands put on the industry.

However, not everyone is agreement with the state of the industry. A Bureau of Labor Statistics report published earlier this year said the apparent shortage of drivers may actually be overblown.

Despite all the chatter about the growing trucking industry and the need for drivers, it's not the most lucrative line of work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, the median income was about $46,800 per year, while median annual wage for truckers was $43,680.

Given restrictions on how many hours a driver can log in a given day (and in a given week), most drivers will average about 2,000 and 3,000 miles a week. Over the course of the year, that a trucker's mileage total can easily exceed 100,000 miles.

For comparison, the average US motorist drives about 13,500 miles a year.