Why should you pursue a career in commercial truck driving? That is a very good question. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have enough valuable information to answer it yourself. So why should someone pursue a career in commercial truck driving? Let me start by giving you some fascinating statistics on the trucking industry.

Did you know that of all the modes of shipping in the commercial trucking industry, the trucking sector dominates the field with 83.7% of revenue? The rail industry is a distant second with just 5.6% of total revenue. The air sector is in third place at 3.2%, and the ocean freight sector is barely in the running with just 1.4% of all revenue carried by ships. As you can see, the trucking industry is not going away anytime soon. In fact, the trucking industry alone rakes in $650 billion in annual revenue each year. That’s 5% of the nation’s GDP! The trucking industry also pays $35 billion in federal, state, and highway use taxes per year and will grow 21% over the next ten years. Not many career fields can promise you great job security without a four-year college degree like the trucking industry can.

Speaking of job security, as of May 2013 there were an estimated 1.5 million heavy truck and tractor trailer drivers earning an average median wage of $38,700 per year, which works out to about $18.61 per hour. . In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that truckers at the bottom end of the country’s scale still earned $25,330 a year and truck drivers at the high end of the country’s scale still earned $59,620 a year. How many other jobs can boast such a wide range of salaries without a four or two year college degree? Not many. So where are more truckers employed than anywhere else? Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Illinois. The state of Texas hired 157,260 truckers in 2013, while Illinois employed about 66,050 truckers. But don’t think you’ll have to move to one of these five states to find a decent job as a truck driver. The entire East Coast is littered with states that have an average of 40,210 to 157,260 working truckers. If you’re looking for the states with the highest concentration of truck driving jobs in the US, look no further. North Dakota has 15,310 trucking jobs with an average median wage of $47,580, while Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Wyoming follow close behind. Truckers in Alaska have the highest median salary at $53,440, while truckers in North Dakota, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia and Wyoming earn an average of $47,000 a year. If you were to look at a map of the United States showing the areas where the most truckers are employed, you would see that truckers are heavily employed from Texas to Pennsylvania and Florida, and all the way to Michigan. . California and the Pacific Northwest also employ many truckers. What areas have the fewest working truckers? Midwestern states. That is why truckers in these states earn more per year. Here is one more thing to consider. US intracontinental truck driving jobs cannot be outsourced.

Here are some more fascinating facts about truckers. Is the total distance traveled by truck drivers per year 93.5 million highway miles? To put that into perspective, that’s 256,197,260 miles per day, 2,965 miles per second, and 3.7 million times around the earth or 195,713 round trips to the moon! That’s a lot of truck! Of course, with all those miles, it would be nice to get good gas mileage. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. On average, long-haul trucks can carry 300 gallons of fuel, but can only travel eight miles per gallon. That’s about 6.8 gallons of fuel per hour at 55 miles per hour. That means it would take a class 8 truck-trailer 44 hours and 347 gallons of fuel to travel from Los Angeles to New York City. Of course, with a 300-gallon fuel tank, you would only have to stop for gas once. With all those miles to go, one of the advantages of driving a truck long-distance is being able to see the beauty and splendor of the American countryside and getting paid to do so.

Now that you know how important the trucking industry is to the US economy, how much the average trucker makes per year, and how many total miles truckers drive on average per year, I want to end this article with one last statistic. . The value of shipped goods transported by the commercial trucking industry per year is $139,463,000,000. That’s $382,090,411 per day and $4,422 per second! That is how valuable the trucking industry and the truckers themselves are to the citizens of the United States. Think about this, if you want. Nearly every facet of our economy depends on the trucking industry, from food to fuel, medicine to machinery, cars to clothing, and construction to manufacturing, all are delivered to and dependent on the commercial trucking industry. Put another way, if it weren’t for the truckers, you wouldn’t have a bed to sleep in, soap and shampoo to clean yourself, clothes to wear, food for breakfast, toothbrush and toothpaste. to brush your teeth, a car to drive to work, gas to fuel that car, a computer to work on, food to eat for lunch, a car to drive home from, a refrigerator, stove, and microwave to store and cook dinner, dishes, and utensils and a table to eat, chairs to sit on and a TV to watch the game while you sit on your sofa and drink your ice cold beer that was transported by truckers. Of course, I left a lot of things out, but you get the idea. Oh, I almost forgot, you wouldn’t have a house to live in either, unless it was made of something other than bricks, concrete, wood, metal, or stone. Remember, if you bought it, a truck brought it.

So back to the original question. Why should you pursue a career in commercial truck driving? Well, now that you know how important the commercial trucking industry is to the US economy, how good the job market is, and how much truckers can earn without a college degree, maybe the real question you should be asking yourself is: “Why shouldn’t you pursue a career in commercial truck driving?”. That is a question only you can answer. If you decide that you want to pursue a career in commercial truck driving, your first step is to get the right training. The commercial truck driving job market is not only full of possibilities, but the steps you need to take to enter the job market are easier than you might think. To become certified to operate a commercial motor vehicle, all you need is a commercial driver’s license, adequate physical health, and the ability to operate a commercial motor vehicle. That’s all. Of course, getting your CDL is a whole different story. Specialized knowledge and training is needed to pass the required tests, and that training is usually obtained at a private or company-sponsored truck driving school. Most truck driving schools will provide you with the CDL training you need to pass the required CDL tests and obtain your commercial driver’s license in a few months.

I hope this article has helped answer basic questions you may have about pursuing a career in commercial truck driving.