Transportation Represents About Two-Thirds of More than $1.4 Trillion in Total Spend

The total cost of US logistics was estimated at $1.408 trillion for 2015, up $30 billion or so in 2014 under the new calculation. A lot of elements go into that number, from warehouses to trucking to pipelines, but as can be seen the three main categories are inventory carrying costs, including the costs of warehousing (30.3% of the total logistics spend in 2015), transportation costs (63.2%), and administrative costs, mostly related to spend on freight forwarders and logistics IT spend not otherwise captured in the other two categories (just 6.4% of the total).

Within transportation, trucking-related spend (including private fleets but excluding parcel) comprise 65.4% of total transport costs and 41.3% of total logistics spend. Parcel was broken out for the first time this year as a separate cost category, estimated at $82.2 billion in total, or 9.2% of transport costs and 5.8% of total logistics.

At $80.7 billion in 2015, rail comprises 9% of transportation spend and 5.7% of the total logistics costs.