BTS 79-25

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) has released a new public use tool for the Commodity Flow Survey (CFS).

The CFS Data Explorer allows users to retrieve CFS estimates for the 2012, 2017, and 2022 surveys. CFS tables are available for all shipments (including hazmat, temperature controlled, and exports), and all data is available for download. An application programming interface (API) is available for querying the data.

The CFS is conducted every five years for BTS by the U.S. Census Bureau as part of the Economic Census. The 2022 CFS is the seventh survey since the program started in 1993. CFS is a shipper survey of approximately 165,000 establishments from the industries of mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, auxiliaries (i.e. warehouses and distribution centers), and select retail and service trade industries that ship commodities. CFS data includes the type of commodities shipped, their origin and destination, their value and weight, and mode(s) of transport.

The CFS Explorer is an experimental product, and all CFS data will move to BTS for future collections, and all suggestions for APIs or other features and recommendations for improvement should be sent to CFS@dot.gov.

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