The U.S. trucking industry paid just shy of $40 billion in highway user taxes in 2014, according to a recent report produced by the American Trucking Associations.
The organization’s annual Trucking Trends report for 2016 revealed the industry took in $726.4 billion in freight revenue, accounting for 81.5 percent of all revenue spent in the U.S. on freight transportation, ATA concludes in its report.
Commercial trucks paid $18.4 billion in federal highway user taxes and $21.6 billion in state highway user taxes, combining for $39.9 billion, according to the Trends report. These numbers obviously exclude several types of taxes that trucking companies pay; the 39.9 billion focuses exclusively on highway use taxes, counting federal and state truck registration taxes, tire taxes and on-highway taxes on diesel and gasoline.
The trucking industry as a whole traveled 279.1 billion miles in 2014 and burned 38.8 billion gallons of diesel fuel, per the report.
The industry employed roughly 7 million people in 2014, of which half — 3.469 million — were truck drivers. These figures include both for-hire and private carriers, along with carriers that do not operate in the long-haul, Class 8 market.
The annual ATA report is available for purchase at this link, and it includes a myriad of other stats about the trucking industry in recent years, including revenue per mile broken down by industry segment, trucking industry pricing compared to inflation, where trucking’s positioned in the overall U.S. economy, carrier and truck registrations by state and more.
