Professional trucking

Professional trucking is the career followed by professional truckers, who are often self-employed on a freelance basis, or employed by trucking companies. A freelance trucker will typically own his own truck, while company truckers will be paid an hourly salary to drive the trucks belonging to the company for which he works.

In the United States, most products are shipped via professional trucking. In prior times, the railroad shipped a lot of goods, but the development of the National Highway System and the consequent general shift from rail transit to the automobile is put more emphasis on trucks as opposed to rail. Very little freight is transported by air; air mail being one key exception. (In contrast to the public USPS, privatized mail services such as DHL and Federal Express still deliver mail in trucks.) Each day, more than 1 million tractor trailers and semis hit the road.