By Timothy Cama, Staff Reporter This story appears in the July 16 print edition of Transport Topics.
The freight transportation industry will grow “significantly” in the next decade, and trucking will increase its share of the market, American Trucking Associations said in a report released last week.
ATA’s “Freight Transportation Forecast to 2023” predicted that freight tonnage will grow 21% by 2023, compared with a base year of 2011. Trucking’s share of the tonnage will increase to 69.6%, more than two percentage points higher than in 2011.
“The trucking industry continues to dominate the freight transportation industry in terms of both tonnage and revenue, comprising 67% of tonnage and 81% of revenue in 2011,” Bob Costello, ATA’s chief economist, said in a July 9 statement announcing the release of the annual report.
Looking ahead, trucking’s dominance will continue not only in tonnage but also in revenue, which will grow slightly to 81.7% of the market share in 2023, the report said.
ATA prepared the report along with economic forecasting firm IHS Global Insight and transportation consulting firm Martin Labbe Associates. It looked at the freight market across all modes and estimated that freight will grow to 16.57 billion tons in 2023 from 13.68 billion tons in 2011.
Most of the forecasts in the report are slightly lower than the previous year, which predicted 24% freight growth from 2010 to 2022 and a 70% tonnage share for trucking.
“We have more information at this point, compared to last year, on the current state of the recovery,” Costello told Transport Topics.
Despite the lower forecast, the actual rates of change are very similar to last year, he said.
“If you look at the long-run outlook, it really doesn’t change that much,” he said. “It’s just that the starting point is a little different.”
The report predicted that truckload volumes will grow by 3.3% per year from 2012 to 2017 and then 1.1% per year from 2018 to 2023. Less-than-truckload volumes will gain 3.5% annually from 2012 to 2017 and 2.3% from 2018 to 2023.
Railroads’ share of tonnage will fall to 15% by 2023, compared with 15.7% in 2011, the report forecast. But tonnage in intermodal transportation will grow 6.2% a year from 2012 to 2017, and 5.4% a year will take place in the next five years.
Domestic maritime freight transportation will grow 1% annually, and air freight’s tonnage will gain 4% per year.
The complete report is available for purchase at www.atabusinesssolutions.com.
