Every day Americans have an opportunity to say thank you for keeping the supply chains open through these turbulent times during National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, running September 11-17, and one Texas pork rind organization is going all-in.
Southern Recipe, a brand that produces a line of snacks CDL professionals encounter at supermarkets and truck stops, reportedly made an early $7,500 donation to St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund and plans to spotlight the crucial occupation responsible for delivering upwards of 72 percent of all goods and materials.
“There’s not a day that goes by that we take our truck drivers for granted. In the midst of a challenging time for many industries, they’re still moving forward and keeping our grocery stores stocked. We’ve been celebrating these important road heroes for more than a decade now, with the help of our incredible charity partner — St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund. These men and women literally help fuel our families with food and comfort,” Mark Singleton, vice president of sales and marketing at Southern Recipe, reportedly said.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) is also heavily promoting National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, offering a line of swag that includes bumper stickers, T-shirts, pins, hats, beverage tumblers, and even “I Heart Truck” socks. The ATA hopes people across America will adorn pro-truck symbols and fix signs along freight hauling highways and byways. As the most prominent truck lobbying organization in the country, the ATA released a fact sheet that demonstrates the necessary job men and women perform every day.
- There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States. Total industry employment is 7.8 million, or one out of every 16 people working in the United States.
- There are 892,078 for-hire carriers and 772,011 private carriers in the United States; 97.4 percent of them have fewer than 20 trucks and 91.3 percent are operating six trucks or less.
- Professional truck drivers drove over 287.9 billion miles in 2016, more than double 25 years ago. Those miles accounted for 14.2 percent of all motor vehicle miles and 29.8 percent of all truck miles.
- The trucking industry paid $43.5 billion in federal and state highway taxes in 2017. The trucking industry paid $17.7 billion in federal highway-user taxes and $25.8 billion in state highway-user taxes in 2017.
- The federal fuel tax for diesel in 2018 is 24.4 cents per gallon; the average state tax for diesel fuel was 25.2 cents per gallon.
- There are 3.70 million class 8 trucks on the road in the United States and 11.49 million commercial trailers were registered in 2018.
- Fine particulate emissions from on-road diesel trucks have been cut by more than half over the past decade.
- More than 80 percent of U.S. communities depend solely on trucking for the delivery of their goods and commodities.
The St. Christopher Truckers Development and Relief Fund is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping over-the-road and regional semi-truck drivers and their families when an illness or injury, occurring within the last year, has caused them to be out of work. For more information about National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, visit the American Trucking Associations.
Sources:
https://www.trucking.org/national-truck-driver-appreciation-week
https://www.trucking.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/ProfessionalTruckDriver.pdf
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