United States Major Highlights

Table 1 presents each modes share of total shipments by weight and value.

• In 1993, the 800,000 establishments represented by the CFS shipped $6 trillion worth of goods, weighing 12.2 billion tons.
• Trucks (for-hire, private, and a combination of both) moved 72 percent or $4.4 trillion of the total value of shipments. Of this total, for-hire trucks handled $2.6 trillion worth of goods.
• The CFS confirms the growing importance of parcel, postal, and courier services, which accounted for over 9 percent of the total value of all shipments in 1993.
• Intermodal shipments exceeded 208 million tons, valued at $660 billion in 1993. Approximately 41 million tons of goods worth $83 billion were moved by the "classic" intermodal combination of truck and rail. Assuming 50,000 pounds of payload per truck, about 1 1/2 million large trucks have been diverted from our highways for a major part of their trips.
• Local transportation is important to our nations commerce. The 1993 CFS reported that 30 percent of the value and 56 percent of the weight of all shipments were moved between locations less than 50 miles apart. More than 39 percent of the value and two-thirds of the weight--6.4 trillion tons--were shipped less than 100 miles.