What the FMCSA census says about trucking in Texas, Ohio and Georgia
The FMCSA publishes its Company Census File for free. It has about 4.5 million rows. Most of them are not what you would call a trucking company, so I filtered it before counting anything. Filter: active status, authorized for hire, 3 or more power units, US address. I also dropped rows where the legal name is an email address, and fleets of 50+ trucks that report zero mileage. Without that last…
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released its Company Census File, which contains detailed information about over 4.5 million transportation businesses in the United States. To analyze the data specifically for trucking companies in Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, the reporter filtered the census file to include only active carriers authorized for hire with three or more power units, based in the United States.
Additionally, the reporter excluded fleets with fewer than five trucks and those reporting zero mileage, to avoid inaccuracies such as Houston's largest carrier claiming 4,872 trucks that drove none.
After applying these filters, the report identified 42,510 trucking carriers across the three states. Laredo, Texas emerged as the largest city for trucking companies, with 1,139 carriers operating a total of 21,208 trucks. Houston trailed closely behind with 2,550 carriers and 42,583 trucks, while Columbus, Ohio had 1,066 carriers and 13,410 trucks. San Antonio, Texas completed the top four cities with 858 carriers and 12,058 trucks.
Interestingly, the city with the fewest carriers, Laredo, also had the highest average trucks per carrier, averaging 19 trucks each. This could be attributed to Laredo's strategic location near the border, where many mid-size fleets engage in short cross-border runs for larger entities. It is crucial to note that the FMCSA's census counts any entity holding for-hire authority, including private fleets that might not traditionally be considered trucking companies.
While the census provides a valuable snapshot of the trucking landscape in these three states, businesses seeking to build a lead list from this data should exercise caution. Not every "largest carrier" in the census is a traditional trucking company; some may be armored-car operators or own fleets for other industries. Therefore, it is essential to verify the nature of the business before making contact.
The reporter has compiled the city-level tables, sorted by fleet size with phone numbers and DOT numbers, and made them available online for anyone to access and review.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.