Trucking Drives the Economy

• Employment: The trucking industry in Texas provides 673,349 jobs, or one out of 14 in the state. Total trucking industry wages paid in Texas are $31.8 billion, with an average annual trucking industry salary of $47,254. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that truck drivers, heavy, tractor-trailer and light, delivery drivers, hold 204,080 jobs with a mean annual salary of $29,590.
• Small Business Emphasis: There are 21,931 trucking companies located in Texas, most of them small, locally owned businesses. These companies are served by a wide range of supporting businesses both large and small.
• Transportation of Essential Products: Trucks transport 82 percent of total manufactured tonnage in the state or 3,202,973 tons per day. Over 82 percent of communities depend exclusively on trucks to move their goods.

Trucking Pays the Freight

• As an Industry: The trucking industry in Texas pays approximately $3.3 billion in federal and state roadway taxes and fees. The industry pays 43 percent of all taxes and fees owed by Texas motorists, despite trucks representing only 10.4 percent of vehicle miles traveled in the state.
• Individual Companies: A typical five-axle tractor-semitrailer combination pays $5,031 in state highway user fees and taxes in addition to $8,959 in federal user fees and taxes. These taxes are over and above the typical taxes paid by businesses in Texas.
• Roadway Use: Texas has 305,270 miles of public roads over which all motorists traveled 235.2 billion miles. Trucking’s use of Texas public roads was 24.5 billion miles.

Safety Matters

• Continually Improving: At the national level, the truck-involved fatal crash rate for 2006 was 1.93 fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle miles of travel (VMT). This rate is at its lowest point since the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) began keeping these records in 1975. The injury crash rate for 2006 was 34.4 injury crashes per 100 million vehicle miles of travel (VMT), also at its lowest point since DOT recordkeeping began.
• Sharing the Road: The trucking industry is committed to sharing the road safely with all vehicles. The Share the Road program sends a team of professional truck drivers to communities around the country to teach car drivers about truck blind spots, stopping distances and safe merging around large trucks, all designed to reduce the number of car-truck accidents.
• Safety First: Texas Motor Transportation Association members put safety first through improved driver training, investment in advanced safety technologies and active participation in industry safety initiatives at the local, state and national levels.