The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau, recently released the 2012 Commodity Flow Survey (CFS). The survey shows that American manufacturers and related industries shipped almost 11.7 billion tons of goods valued at more than $13.6 trillion in 2012, according to preliminary numbers. About 75% of all freight movements, excluding imports, shipments from farms, crude oil production, and a few smaller categories, are reported in the CFS.
The survey shows that in 2012 trucks moved 8 billion tons of product in the United States. Those shipments were worth an estimated $10 trillion. According to the report, trucks make up 70 percent of both the value and the weight of freight as reported in the 2012 CFS.
Rail was the second most-used mode by weight, carrying 1.8 billion tons of freight for a 16 percent share by weight but only $455 billion or 3 percent of goods by value.
Multi-mode shipments, which use more than one type of transportation, including parcel shipments, were second to trucking in shipment value, at $1.8 trillion for a share of more than 13 percent of total freight value. These multiple modes carried only 347 million tons or 3.0 percent of total freight weight.
