The new marketplace may be in cyberspace, but you deliver the goods in a truck, exactly the same way you moved freight to the old, pre-Internet marketplace. While the latest data were from 1997, the study nonetheless provided great insight into today s economy and the freight system. That was a total of 6.67 trillion tons. If you add the many secondary shipments involved in freight distribution, trucking s share gets even larger, since trucks make nearly all of the movements at this level. The forecast was conducted before the explosion in Internet-based transactions.
Trucking owes itself a big pat on the back.