Warehousing

Firms in the truck transportation and warehousing industry provide a link between manufacturers and consumers. Businesses, and occasionally individuals, contract with trucking and warehousing companies to pick up, transport, store, and deliver a variety of goods. The industry includes general freight trucking, specialized freight trucking, and warehousing and storage.
General freight trucking uses motor vehicles, such as trucks and tractor-trailers, to provide over-the-road transportation of general commodities. This industry segment is further subdivided based on distance traveled. Local trucking establishments carry goods primarily within a single metropolitan area and its adjacent non-urban areas. Long-distance trucking establishments carry goods between distant areas.
Local trucking comprised 27,000 trucking establishments in 2004. The work of local trucking firms varies with the products transported. Produce truckers usually pick up loaded trucks early in the morning and spend the rest of the day delivering produce to many different grocery stores. Lumber truck drivers, on the other hand, make several trips from the lumberyard to one or more construction sites. Some local truck transportation firms also take on sales and customer relations responsibilities, in addition to delivering the firm’s products. Some local trucking firms specialize in garbage collection and trash removal or hauling dirt and debris.
Long-distance trucking comprises establishments engaged primarily in providing long-distance trucking between distant areas and sometimes between the United States and Canada or Mexico. Numbering 39,000 establishments, these firms handle every kind of commodity.
Specialized freight trucking provides over-the-road transportation of freight, which, because of size, weight, shape, or other inherent characteristics, requires specialized equipment, such as flatbeds, tankers, or refrigerated trailers. This industry sector also includes the moving industry—that is, the transportation of used household, institutional, and commercial furniture. Like general freight trucking, specialized freight trucking is subdivided into local and long-distance components. The specialized freight trucking sector contained 46,000 establishments in 2004.
Some goods are carried cross country using intermodal transportation to save time and money. Intermodal transportation encompasses any combination of transportation by truck, train, plane, or ship. Typically, trucks perform at least one leg of the trip. For example, a shipment of cars from an assembly plant begins its journey when they are loaded onto rail cars. Next, trains haul the cars across country to a depot, where the shipments are broken into smaller lots and loaded onto tractor-trailers, which drive them to dealerships. Each of these steps is carefully orchestrated and timed so that the cars arrive just in time to be shipped on their next leg of their journey. Goods can be transported at lower cost this way, but they cannot be highly perishable—like fresh produce—or have strict delivery schedules. Trucking dominates the transportation of perishable and time-sensitive goods.
Warehousing and storage facilities comprised 13,000 establishments in 2004. These firms are engaged primarily in operating warehousing and storage facilities for general merchandise and refrigerated goods. They provide facilities to store goods; self-storage mini-warehouses that rent to the general public also are included in this segment of the industry.

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