Trucks Bring It: Delivering Alabama’s Economy

• Trucking is the dominant transportation source in Alabama, transporting more than 80 percent of total manufactured tonnage in the state .
• No other mode delivers the goods as effectively and efficiently as trucking. We are the wheels of Alabama’s diverse and thriving economy.
• 86.1 percent of Alabama communities depend exclusively on trucks to move their goods.

Employing thousands of Alabamians

• Total trucking industry wages paid in Alabama in 2021 exceeded $6.4 billion, with an average annual trucking industry salary of $50,859.
• Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers held 34,630 jobs in Alabama in 2021.
• The national average annual salary of an over-the-road truck driver is $69,387.
• In 2021, Alabama trucking businesses provided 125,110 jobs – or about one in 13 in the state.
• Total trucking industry wages paid in Alabama in 2021 exceeded $6.4 billion, with an average annual trucking industry salary of $50,859.
• ‘As of April 2019, there were 31,940 trucking companies located in Alabama, most of them small, locally-owned businesses. These companies are served by a wide range of supporting businesses both large and small.

Trucking Pays Freight

• As an industry in 2021, the trucking industry in Alabama paid approximately $652 million in federal and state roadway taxes. The industry paid 34 percent of all taxes owed by Alabama motorists, despite trucks representing only 10 percent of vehicle miles traveled in the state.
• In 2023, a typical five-axle tractor-semitrailer combination paid $5,477 in state highway user fees and taxes in addition to $10,556 in federal user fees and taxes. These taxes were over and above the typical taxes paid by businesses in Alabama.
• Alabama has 100,171 miles of public roads over which all motorists traveled 67.9 billion miles. Trucking’s use of the public roads was 6.1 billion miles.

Safety Matters

America’s trucking industry invests more than $9.5 billion annually in highway and workplace safety. That investment is paying off. At the national level, the large truck fatal crash rate for 2018 was 1.45 fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT). This rate has dropped by 73 percent since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping these records in 1975. Meanwhile, in Alabama, the fatal crash rate is 1.14 per 100 million VMT.

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 how to merge safely around large trucks, all designed to reduce the number of car-truck accidents. Safety First: Alabama Trucking 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.

Working for a Cleaner Tomorrow

American trucking businesses continue to improve energy and environmental efficiency even while increasing the number of miles they drive. In 2019, combination trucks consumed 100 billion fewer gallons of fuel than passenger vehicles in the U.S. and accounted for just 16 percent of the total highway transportation fuel consumed.

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