According to page 57 the European Union publication, Panorama of Transport, 43 percent of American freight is shipped by rail and 30 percent goes by truck. This makes the American rail freight system the envy of the world, as just 10 percent of European freight goes by rail, with 46 percent going by truck, and just 4 percent of Japanese freight goes by rail, with 60 percent going by truck.
The EU got its U.S. data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ annual National Transportation Statistics report. However, if you look at the most recent edition of table 1-50: U.S. ton-miles of freight in that report, you won’t find those numbers at all. Instead (using 2006 data), something like 42 percent of freight goes by truck while only 32 percent goes by rail. That’s still a greater share of freight going by rail than in Europe or Japan, but a reversal in dominance between rail and trucks.
Yet the Panorama of Transport didn’t get it wrong. I have the corresponding table from the 2008 edition of National Transportation Statistics, and the numbers for 2006 in that table agree with those used by the EU. So what happened to change the numbers?
