Logistics and Transportation Spotlight
The Logistics and Transportation Industry in the United States
Overview
The logistics and transportation industry in the United States is highly competitive. By investing in this sector, multinational firms position themselves to better facilitate the flow of goods throughout the world's largest consumer market. International and domestic companies in this industry benefit from a highly skilled workforce and relatively low costs. United States Business Logistics Costs reached $1.6 trillion in 2018 (8 percent of GDP that year). In 2018, foreign direct investment in the industry totaled $1.5 billion.
Analysts expect investment to correlate with sector-specific growth in the U.S. economy. America's highly integrated supply chain network links producers and consumers through multiple transportation modes, including air and express delivery services, freight rail, maritime transport, and truck transport. To serve customers efficiently, multinational and domestic firms provide tailored logistics and transportation solutions to ensure coordinated goods movement from origin to end user through each supply chain network segment.
Industry Subsectors
Air and express delivery services (EDS): Firms offer expedited, time-sensitive, and end-to-end services for documents, small parcels, and high-value items. An $87 billion industry in the United States, EDS firms also provide the export infrastructure for many exporters, particularly small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford to operate their own supply chain. Recent EDS industry growth has been generated by the expansion of electronic commerce use by businesses and consumers.
Freight rail: High volumes of heavy cargo and products are transported long distances throughout the United States via rail network. Each day, this 140,000-mile system delivers an average of 5 million tons of goods and serves nearly every industrial, wholesale, retail, and resource-based sector of the economy. In 2017, Freight rail moves more than 70 percent of the nation's coal, about 58 percent of its raw metal ores, 1.6 million carloads of wheat, corn, and other agricultural products, and 13.7 million intermodal containers and trailers that transport consumer goods.
Maritime: This subsector includes carriers, seaports, terminals, and labor involved in the movement of cargo and passengers by water. Water transportation moves nearly 70 percent of all U.S. international merchandise trade, including 72 percent of U.S. exports by tonnage.
Trucking: Over-the-road transportation of cargo is provided by motor vehicles over short and medium distances. According to the American Trucking Associations, trucking revenues were $700 billion in 2017. That year, trucks moved almost 11 billion tons of freight.
Logistics and Transportation Industry Associations
American Association of Port Authorities
American Trucking Associations
Association for Supply Chain Management
Association of American Railroads
Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals
Express Delivery and Logistics Association
Industry Publications:
American Shipper
Journal of Commerce
Material Handling & Logistics
Transport Intelligence
Transport Topics
Panel: Supply Chain, Logistics & Shipping
In an increasingly globalized world, the logistics and shipping process can quickly become complicated, as today’s companies have multiple parts from multiple locations coming to be assembled and then shipped off again. This breakout panel discussion from the 2019 SelectUSA Investment Summit provides information on what firms need to know, how to move goods into and throughout the country, the kinds of services available to assist in the process, and more.
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