ARLINGTON, VA — Fleets of six or less trucks make up more than 90 percent of the American trucking industry.

Imagine.

There’s something both reassuring and at the same time unsettling about the fact that all of these different trucking micro-companies somehow co-ordinate with their customers and get things where they need to be — all without any government or overarching source telling who needs to get what where by when.

That’s just one of the many compelling trucker-friendly facts that leap out at you from a new report from the American Trucking Associations (ATA).

If nothing else you’ll find comes in handy when telling outsiders about how important your industry is to the public.

The report, titled ATA American Trucking Trends 2013, provides some interesting facts on how trucking is the dominant mode of freight transportation, with even more goods being delivered by trucks than ever before.

Here are some of the most notable points.

• • Trucks moved 9.4 billion tonnes of freight in 2012. Look at that another way and it equals 68.5 percent of all domestic shipments. Both of these numbers are up
• • Trucking is responsible for $642.1 billion in gross freight-related revenues in 2012, or 80.7 percent of freight bills in the United States
• • Trucking-related industries employ 6.9 million people
• • A majority of trucking companies are small businesses, with 90.5 percent operating six trucks or fewer. Only 2.8 percent run fleets of more than 20 trucks
• • In 2011, class 6-8 trucks trekked 137.2 billion miles
• • The trucking industry paid $36.5 billion in highway user fees to federal and state governments in 2011. According to the ATA, that’s a 10.3 percent jump from 2009.

“Good data is important to good policymaking,” says ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. “And the data in Trends shows a dynamic, growing industry that is the literal lifeblood of the U.S. economy.”

The full report is available online to participating state trucking associations and is also available for purchase. For more info, visit trucking.org.