A U.S. Bureau of Transportation report released last week showed that transportation of freight was on the rise in June, reaching a total of $99.8 billion worth of material.
The transport uptick held true across all five transportation modes utilized under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In fact, the June figures represent a 7.7 percent increase over statistics from the previous year and also represent the eighth consecutive month in which that has been the case. Broken down to a case by case basis, though, the value of goods being transported by pipeline increased 26.3 percent, vessel by 14.5 percent, rail by 9.8 Percent, truck by 4.4 percent and air by 1.9 percent.
Despite their value increases being lower, truck remains the single largest mode of transportation for U.S.-NAFTA freight. Trucks were responsible for 63.4 percent of all goods movement between trade partners, accounting for $32.2 billion of imports and $31 billion of exports.They also carried 58.3 percent of the freight value to and from Canada and 68.8 percent of the value of freight to and from Mexico.
Of those items being transported, the top thing being shipped between the United States and both of its North American trading partners was vehicles and parts.