As one of the top 100 carriers and top 50 brokers in the county, Minnesota-based Bay & Bay Transportation moves 4,000 to 5,000 truckloads of freight each week. Shippers such as Mars, Nestle, Tyson, and Land O’Lakes rely on the company to transport an array of both refrigerated goods and dry shipments
“I like to tell people we haul a lot of candy bars, butter, and frozen turkeys,” said Sam Anderson, president and CEO of Bay & Bay.
Anderson and Dan Murray, senior vice president of the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), presented an overview of the trucking industry at the April 10 Freight 101 webinar: Trucking, one in a series of offerings as part of CTS’s "Unpacking Freight: From Producers to Front Doors" programming.
“The trucking industry is the largest freight mode in the world,” said Murray, and its share of the freight pie continues to grow. “The more you need that just-in-time last-mile activity, it’s going to involve a truck.”
Murray shared some statistics that shed light on the trucking industry’s scope and impact:
- Trucks move 73 percent of cargo by volume and nearly 80 percent by revenue in the US.
- 1 in 16 US jobs are associated with the trucking industry in some way.
- There are 143,180 trucking jobs and 65,500 trucking companies in Minnesota.
- 90 percent of all trucking companies in the US have five or fewer trucks.
Since 2022, the trucking industry has faced the economic challenge of a long recession, experiencing negative growth overall combined with spikes in costs to operate trucks—resulting in some 39,000 carriers leaving the business, Murray said. While economic concerns remain, the industry is poised for better conditions.
