The American Trucking Associations released the latest edition of its annual data compendium – ATA American Trucking Trends 2019 – which showed that the industry's revenues jumped to $796.7 billion in 2018, up from $700.1 billion the previous year.

"2018 was a year of dynamic growth for the trucking industry," said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. "Trends is a simple, one-stop resource to see where our industry is so executives and policymakers can make informed decisions about where it is going."

Among the other findings in Trends:

In 2018, trucks moved 11.49 billion tons of freight, 71.4% of the nation's tonnage freight.

Trucking's revenues accounted for 80.3% of the nation's freight bill.

Trade – especially with Mexico and Canada – is very important to trucking. Trucks moved 67.4% of surface freight between the U.S. and Canada – up 3.6% in 2018 – and 83.5% of cross-border trade with Mexico, up 10.2% from the previous year.

There are 7.8 million people employed in trucking-related jobs, up 100,000 from the previous year. This includes 3.5 million professional drivers.

Women make up 6.6% of the industry's drivers and minorities account for 40.4% of truckers.

Most carriers are small companies – 91.3% of fleets operate six or fewer trucks and 97.4% operate 20 or fewer.

"ATA believes good decisions are based on good data, and Trends is full of strong data, which is why it finds a home on the desks of elected officials, regulators and executives across the supply chain," said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear.