Local General Freight Trucking
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 40,000 local general freight trucking companies in the US provide truckload (TL) and less than truckload (LTL) transportation services within cities and over short distances with drivers returning home each night. Trucking firms transport a wide variety of goods, but the majority is boxed or palletized. Local routes are typically less than 150 miles.
Failure to Meet Safety Requirements
Failure to meet safety regulations can result in investigations, fines, loss of license, and idled vehicles.
Emergence of Online Freight Coordinators
The local freight trucking industry is benefiting from online sites, like Uber Freight and TruckLoads, that match shippers and distribution centers with local freight carriers.
Industry size & Structure
A typical local general freight trucking company operates out of a single location, employs 7-8 workers, and generates about $1.4 million annually.
- The local general freight trucking industry consists of about 40,000 companies, which employ about 299,000 workers and generate about $59 billion annually.
- The industry is fragmented with the 50 largest firms representing just 10% of revenue.
- Firms range from the small operations that serves a single local area using few owned trucks, to large firms that operate a network of locations across the nation using leased vehicles and servicing many local markets.
- About two dozen large firms have networks of 10 or more establishments, which are regionally or nationally dispersed to serve specific cities.
- Large companies include Jack Hood Transportation, Holland, Reddaway, New Penn, Cowan and EPES.
Industry Forecast
Local General Freight Trucking Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Mar 11, 2025 - Spot Rates Rise Amidst Tariff Threats
- The on-again, off-again uncertainty of Trump’s tariffs against North American trade partners is beginning to roil the trucking industry, particularly on the Canadian border. In an effort to get ahead of tariff-induced cost increases, shippers are scrambling to accelerate shipments across borders, causing a spike in spot rates. Data from DAT Freight & Analytics shows that spot rates from US to Canada for dry bed, containers, and reefer trucks shot up by 35% to a two-year high by early March 2025. Before the latest tariff deadline, dry bed volume along the Toronto to Chicago trade route surged almost 60% in one week. It all adds up to a potential bumpy year for an industry that hauls 67% of surface trade-goods across the US/Canada border each year, according to the American Trucking Association.
- Trucking cargo thefts rose across North America in 2024 - jumping 27% over the previous year to an all-time high - per trucking analytics firm Verisk CargoNet. The company’s annual analysis found 3,625 theft incidents during the year with an average estimated value of about $202,000 per incident, up from $180,000 a year ago. Texas and California reported the biggest increases in the number of thefts, up 39% and 33%, respectively. Verisk CargoNet also reported the types of cargo most targeted - consumer electronics and computer hardware, produce, raw and finished copper products, cosmetics, and vitamin supplements, among others. Break-ins and full-trailer theft was still the main tactic, although criminals are becoming more sophisticated, including hacking trucking firms’ back-end systems and forging documents and cargo manifests. Break-ins and trailer theft were most prevalent in the major markets of Atlanta, Dallas, LA, and New York City.
- Trucking industry employment remained flat throughout 2024, while average wages for nonsupervisory employees in the local trucking specialty segment increased more than 2% year-over-year in November 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). A significant driver shortage brought on by attrition through retirements and younger-employee burnout in a stressful and isolating job has been hampering the industry. Truck drivers are in high demand and paid well as a result. An analysis of industry job postings by freight factoring company altLINE estimates that there is an ongoing deficit of 24,000 drivers. When combined with the average $3,900 per week a truck makes in revenue (using trucking giant Schneider National’s reported earnings), the staff shortage costs the freight industry $95 million a week.
- The trucking industry’s transformation from diesel-powered fleets to environmentally cleaner electric versions came to an abrupt halt when the second Trump administration ended the federal government’s EV mandates in January 2025. The changes were widely expected, so much so that California - the country’s most aggressive testing ground for EV mandates - preemptively killed its new rules that would have drastically reduced emissions and boosted funding for building related charging station infrastructure. With a new government in power that is hostile towards the industry’s EV transformation, the uncertainty surrounding mandates and the expectation that the EPA will no longer support the moves throws trucking’s electric vehicle transformation effort into doubt.
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