The U.S. trucking industry combines a large vehicle fleet, hundreds of thousands of active carriers, millions of drivers, and a central role in domestic freight. The statistics below describe its scale, freight activity, workforce, safety record, enforcement, and hazardous-material operations, with measurement periods and definitions kept explicit.
Contents
- Fleet and carrier scale
- Freight moved by truck
- Workforce, pay, and outlook
- Safety, crashes, and fatalities
- Inspections and violations
- Hazardous materials and operating context
Fleet and carrier scale
The U.S. fleet includes both single-unit trucks and combination trucks. In 2022, the country had 11,083,997 registered single-unit trucks and 3,249,824 registered combination trucks. Large trucks traveled 331.3 billion vehicle-miles that year, equal to 10.4% of all motor-vehicle vehicle-miles traveled. These figures describe registered vehicles and large-truck travel, not a count of individual trucking companies.
The FMCSA 2024 Pocket Guide to Large Truck and Bus Statistics counted 787,189 active interstate or intrastate-hazardous-material carriers in December 2023. FMCSA’s definition of active is based on recent qualifying activity, and some non-hazardous-material intrastate carriers are excluded. Within that population were 519,420 for-hire carriers, 197,563 private carriers, and 67,667 carriers classified as both for-hire and private.
| U.S. trucking measure | Period | Count or share |
|---|---|---|
| Registered single-unit trucks | 2022 | 11,083,997 |
| Registered combination trucks | 2022 | 3,249,824 |
| Active interstate or intrastate-HM carriers | December 2023 | 787,189 |
| For-hire carriers | December 2023 | 519,420 |
| Private carriers | December 2023 | 197,563 |
| Both for-hire and private | December 2023 | 67,667 |
FMCSA estimated approximately 9 million commercial motor vehicle drivers operating in the United States in its 2023 snapshot. About 5.6 million operated interstate and about 3.4 million operated intrastate. The agency notes that some intrastate counts are extrapolated from state data, and the registration-based CMV driver count is not limited to heavy-truck occupations.
For FMCSA-regulated carriers in the United States and covered foreign domiciles, reported 2023 equipment and licensing totals were 5,421,013 power units and 3,981,465 CDL drivers. These totals use a different regulatory population from the registered-vehicle and estimated-driver figures above, so they should not be added together as if they were one unified census.
Freight moved by truck
Truck shipments within the United States totaled an estimated 12,015 million tons in 2023, according to the FMCSA guide’s FAF5.5-based series. The comparable estimates were 11,557 million tons in 2020, 11,780 million tons in 2021, and 11,717 million tons in 2022. These are estimates of domestic freight and exclude foreign-to-foreign traffic passing through the United States.
The Census Bureau’s shipper-based 2022 Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) provides a broader all-modes context. The survey estimated 12.2 billion tons of U.S. goods shipments across all modes, valued at $18.0 trillion. The value was 24.0% higher than in 2017, measured in current dollars and therefore not adjusted for inflation or seasonality. The CFS excludes several industries and direct imports.
Trucks hauled approximately 8.3 billion tons in the 2022 CFS, or 68.1% of CFS tonnage. Truck-mode shipments were valued at $13.2 trillion, representing 73.5% of CFS commodity value. The two percentages use different denominators—tonnage and commodity value—so they describe separate dimensions of truck freight’s role.
Distance matters when interpreting these totals. An estimated 56.4% of CFS tonnage traveled less than 50 miles in 2022. That distance statistic covers CFS shipments, not only long-haul trucking. Trucks carried 49.6% of the tonnage traveling to Canada in the same survey.
The CFS also estimated 2.6 billion tons of hazardous-material shipments worth $2.1 trillion in 2022. Those figures are official survey estimates subject to the CFS’s coverage limits, rather than a complete count of every hazardous-material movement.
For longer-range planning, Freight Analysis Framework Version 5 provides annual estimates for 2017 through 2024 and forecasts through 2050 across 132 FAF zones. The annual values are model-based estimates, and the 2030–2050 values are forecasts rather than observed outcomes.
Workforce, pay, and outlook
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported about 2,221,200 U.S. jobs for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in 2025. In the May 2025 Occupational Outlook Handbook data, the median annual wage was $58,640 and the median hourly wage was $28.19. The annual median excludes self-employed workers.
Pay varies across the occupation. In May 2025, the lowest-paid 10% earned less than $40,140 annually, while the highest-paid 10% earned more than $79,380. Median annual pay was $60,320 in truck transportation, compared with $58,550 in wholesale trade, $56,570 in manufacturing, and $56,080 in construction.
The BLS Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers Occupational Outlook Handbook projects 2,305,000 driver jobs in 2035, which is 83,800 above the 2025 level. That represents projected employment growth of 4% from 2025 to 2035. BLS also projects about 214,500 openings per year on average over that period, including replacement needs as well as growth.
Truck transportation employed 40% of heavy and tractor-trailer drivers in 2025. A separate BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics product counted 2,062,040 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers and reported a $59,710 mean annual wage in May 2025. The May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wages report is an employer survey, and its mean should not be confused with the Occupational Outlook Handbook’s median; the products also differ in methodology and coverage.
Safety, crashes, and fatalities
Fatal crashes involving large trucks totaled 4,502 in 2019, 4,423 in 2020, 5,178 in 2021, and 5,279 in 2022. In 2022, large-truck crashes accounted for 5,936 total fatalities. Large-truck occupants accounted for 1,097 of those deaths, while nonmotorists accounted for 672, or 11.3% of large-truck-crash fatalities.
The fatality definition in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System is a death within 30 days. The crash counts are police-reported observations, and the FMCSA guide notes a classification change in 2016. That context is important when comparing years or interpreting a large-truck crash as a measure of trucking-company performance.
The 2022 picture also includes sample-based estimates for nonfatal outcomes. Large trucks were involved in an estimated 114,000 injury crashes, with an estimated 160,000 people injured. They were also involved in an estimated 384,000 property-damage-only crashes. These estimates come from the Crash Report Sampling System and are rounded to the nearest thousand.
Relative to travel, large-truck fatality involvement was 1.59 fatalities per 100 million vehicle-miles traveled in 2022. Injury-crash involvement was an estimated 34.5 injury crashes per 100 million vehicle-miles. The injury rate combines CRSS estimates with Federal Highway Administration vehicle-miles data, while the fatality rate uses observed fatality information.
Inspections and violations
Federal and state inspectors conducted 3,011,902 commercial motor vehicle inspections in the United States in 2023. Driver inspections totaled 2,909,709, and 185,640 produced an out-of-service (OOS) violation. The resulting driver OOS rate was 6.4%. These driver inspections included levels I, II, III, and VI and covered trucks and buses.
Vehicle inspections totaled 1,994,946 in 2023, with a 22.6% vehicle OOS rate. The vehicle inspection categories were levels I, II, V, and VI, again covering trucks and buses. Because inspection counts can involve different inspection types and populations, the driver and vehicle totals should not be treated as a single number of unique vehicles or drivers.
Hazmat inspections totaled 174,620 in 2023, with a 4.0% OOS rate. Traffic-enforcement inspections totaled 593,547. Those inspections recorded 386,359 moving violations and 12,782 drug-and-alcohol violations. Violation counts are events recorded during enforcement, not counts of unique drivers.
Vehicle inspections recorded 3,097,660 vehicle violations and 678,529 vehicle OOS violations in 2023. These are violation counts, not unique vehicles. The distinction matters because one inspection or vehicle can produce more than one violation.
Hazardous materials and operating context
FMCSA counted 132,574 active hazardous-material carriers in 2023. Of these, 91,009 were interstate carriers and 41,565 were intrastate carriers. The agency also counted 898 active hazardous-material carriers with a safety permit. These figures describe FMCSA’s active-carrier population and are not equivalent to the CFS estimate of hazardous-material shipment tonnage and value.
The same 2023 FMCSA tables counted 5,461 active household-goods carriers and 28,351 registered property brokers. These categories show how trucking activity includes specialized carrier populations and intermediaries in addition to the broad for-hire and private classifications.
The CFS gives additional operating context through the industries that ship goods. In 2022, in-scope manufacturing establishments shipped an estimated 4.9 billion tons worth $7.1 trillion. In-scope wholesale establishments shipped 4.1 billion tons worth $8.1 trillion. These are shipper-based survey totals with CFS scope exclusions, and the dollar values are nominal.
Together, the carrier, freight, labor, safety, inspection, and hazardous-material measures describe different parts of the U.S. trucking system. Their definitions are not interchangeable: a registered truck, an active carrier, a regulated power unit, a CMV driver estimate, a CFS shipment, and a police-reported crash each represent a distinct statistical universe.