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by mparkms 940 days ago
Looks like 73% of freight is moved by truck in the US vs 77% in the EU. Not a big enough difference to really matter I think.

https://www.trucking.org/economics-and-industry-data

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068592/eu-road-freight-...

2 comments

The usual metric is ton-kilometers of freight, not gross tonnage. Going by gross tonnage alone overweights the impact of last-kilometer freight, which is almost always by road.

Measured by ton-kilometers, the EU moves about 5% of freight by rail, whereas the US moves about 28% of freight by rail.

Intermodal (hauling shipping containers for trucks to take last-kilometer) is by far America’s biggest freight type. Something like 80% or more of consumer goods go through intermodal or road on their way to distribution centers that load it onto trucks that deliver it to the store (or your home).

For rail alone it looks like 50/50. 50% is resources and dry goods, oil and gas, and the rest is consumer goods, boxcar, flatcar, intermodal. [1]

[1] https://www.aar.org/topic/industries-we-support/#!