Publisher's Synopsis
According to new estimated by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the US Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, over 19 billion tons of freight, valued at $13 trillion, was carried over 4.4 trillion ton-miles in the US in 2002. This means that on a typical day in the US in 2002, about 53 million tons of goods valued at about $36 billion moved nearly 12 billion ton-miles on the national multimodal transportation network. The new estimates combine data from the Commodity Flow Survey - the most comprehensive nationwide source of freight data - and data from other sources to provide the most complete picture of freight movement in America yet available. This report discussed the resulting composite estimates, using 2002, the year of the latest CFS, as the baseline. It also discusses more recent data for specific modes, the geography of freight movements in the US, and the growing importance of international trade to the US freight transportation system.
