How Many Trucking Companies Are in the U.S. in 2026?

The FMCSA Registration Statistics dashboard reports:

• 2,079,041 carriers (active motor carrier companies with USDOT numbers)

Authorized Interstate Carriers vs. Total USDOT Registrations: What’s the Real Number?

Many industry summaries and market discussions use a narrower definition: authorized interstate motor carriers (often referenced around the ~580,000 range in industry narrative context).

This figure is narrower than the FMCSA USDOT registration count because it is typically framed around carriers that are authorized for interstate operations and generally aligned with for-hire activity. It excludes many entities that exist in the FMCSA registration universe (for example, some private fleets, certain intrastate-only registrations, and other categories that are not “for-hire interstate carriers” in the everyday business sense).

What counts as a “trucking company”?

Before you can answer “how many trucking companies are in the us” with confidence, you have to decide what you mean by “trucking company” in operational terms. Federal datasets do not start with the casual phrase “trucking company.” They start with registration and authority categories that reflect safety oversight and legal operating status.

Below are the four definitions that matter most, and why each one changes the final count.

Registered motor carrier (USDOT number)

At the federal level, the most common starting point is the USDOT number. FMCSA explains that companies register with the agency for a USDOT number and are responsible for keeping that information updated.

What this means in practice:

• A USDOT number is a registration identifier, not a guarantee that the company is a for-hire trucking business in the way most people picture it.
• The USDOT registration universe can include for-hire carriers, private fleets, and other entities that operate commercial motor vehicles under FMCSA oversight.
• FMCSA’s Registration Statistics “Carriers” count is explicitly based on active motor carrier companies with USDOT numbers, which is why it is the broadest defensible answer when someone asks for an “official number.”

This is also why the number can exceed two million: you are counting the federal registration universe of motor carrier companies, not only the slice of the market that sells trucking capacity to outside customers.

Interstate vs. intrastate registrations

FMCSA does not treat “motor carrier” as a single homogeneous category. In the Registration Statistics dashboard, FMCSA describes “Motor Carrier Classification” and notes that this data includes active motor carrier companies with USDOT numbers registered as:

• Interstate
• Intrastate hazardous materials
• Intrastate non-hazardous materials

Why this matters for your count:

• If you only want carriers operating across state lines, your number will be smaller than the total USDOT registrant universe.
• If you include intrastate registrations (and especially certain hazmat-related intrastate registrations), your number will be larger.
• Most “industry narrative” counts gravitate toward interstate carriers because that definition aligns more closely with national freight markets and shipper/broker procurement.

So, when you see a big gap between two sources, one of the first questions to ask is: are they counting interstate carriers only, or all registered carriers regardless of interstate/intrastate classification?

For-hire vs. private carriers

Another major reason counts differ is the difference between for-hire carriers and private carriers.

FMCSA describes “Operation Classification” like this: motor carriers register their operation classification as for-hire, private, both for-hire and private, or another classification. FMCSA further clarifies the functional distinction:

• For-hire carriers are paid to transport property or passengers.
• Private carriers transport their own goods.

This is one of the biggest “translation problems” between everyday language and federal registration data.

In everyday conversation, when someone asks “how many trucking companies are in the us,” they often mean “how many businesses sell trucking capacity to shippers” (for-hire). But the FMCSA registration universe is broader because safety oversight and registration apply to private fleets too.

A practical way to think about it:

• For-hire counts align better with market competition, carrier procurement, and the “carrier landscape” a shipper or broker experiences.
• Total registered counts align better with the overall scope of regulated commercial vehicle operations under FMCSA’s system.

Both are valid. They just answer different questions.

Operating authority (MC number and authority types)

Finally, there is operating authority, which is often what people are implicitly asking about when they want the “real number of trucking companies” competing for freight.

FMCSA states that companies who will transport people or goods for hire apply for operating authority, and it defines Operating Authority as a motor carrier’s right to operate a commercial motor vehicle to transport goods or passengers for hire. FMCSA also notes it requires for-hire carriers to obtain operating authority and maintain proof of insurance, and that brokers and freight forwarders may also require operating authority because they receive payment for arranging transportation.

This matters because:

• A company can exist in the USDOT registration universe but not be a for-hire trucking company selling capacity across state lines.
• Operating authority is a better fit for the question “how many carriers are competing in the for-hire market,” but it introduces its own complexity because authority types and business models vary.
• Some entities involved in freight movement (like brokers and freight forwarders) may show up in authority-related ecosystems even though they are not trucking fleets.

So, when you see a number like “~580,000 authorized interstate motor carriers,” you should interpret it as an attempt to describe a narrower group that is closer to “for-hire, interstate carriers” than the total USDOT registrant universe.

The trucking industry is huge, but fragmented

A national carrier count is only useful if you understand what it implies about market structure. The U.S. trucking industry is not dominated by a few giant fleets. It is a massive network with extreme fragmentation, where the long tail of small carriers shapes competition, pricing, and capacity availability.

Here is the context that matters most when interpreting “how many trucking companies are in the us.”

Trucking’s share of domestic freight tonnage

Trucking is consistently reported as moving roughly 72%+ of domestic freight tonnage.

For example, ATA-reported summaries commonly cite trucking representing around 72.7% of tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation in the U.S. (language widely repeated in ATA-originated reporting).

This matters because even small shifts in carrier count, capacity, or failures can ripple through the entire economy. When the dominant mode is this large, the structure of that mode becomes a national-level concern.

Economic size: a $906 billion industry (2024 estimate)

The market is also enormous in direct economic terms. In the 2025 edition of ATA’s American Trucking Trends as summarized by industry reporting, trucking revenue in 2024 is cited at $906 billion (down from $1.004 trillion in 2023).

That revenue scale explains why both large carriers and small fleets can coexist in the same market:

• Large carriers build advantage through network density, dedicated contracts, and investment cycles.
• Small carriers survive through specialization, cost discipline, lane strategy, and direct customer relationships.

The count of companies matters because it reflects how many decision-makers are participating in that revenue pool.

Jobs and labor footprint: 8.4 million trucking-related workers

Trucking is not just a freight network. It is a labor ecosystem.

In the same Trends-style reporting summary, trucking is cited as employing 8.4 million people in industry-related jobs, including 3.58 million professional drivers in 2024.

This matters for the carrier-count question in two ways:

• A “trucking company” count is partly a proxy for how distributed employment and entrepreneurship is across the industry.
• Labor constraints, turnover, and driver availability directly affect which registered carriers can convert authority into real capacity.

Small-business reality: why the industry feels “crowded”

The clearest explanation for trucking’s fragmentation is that the industry is overwhelmingly small-business driven.

Trends-style summaries cite that:

• 91.5% of carriers operate 10 or fewer trucks
• 99.3% operate fewer than 100 power units

This is why the question “how many companies” often matters more than “who are the biggest.”

In a fragmented market:

• Shippers and brokers care about how many viable carrier options exist in a lane, not just who the top 10 are by revenue.
• Pricing pressure intensifies because capacity is distributed across thousands of small operators.
• Market cycles (tight capacity vs loose capacity) are heavily influenced by entry and exit of small carriers, not just fleet decisions by the largest players.

If you want to understand competition in trucking, the company count is not trivia. It is the structure of the industry.