July 29, 2013

Kan-Haul’s Food Transportation US Statistics Infographic

Kan-Haul has long served the food transportation niche within the US, and are proudly expanding to serve a more global need. Along the way, we’ve acquired a deep working knowledge of the industry we serve. We’ve taken some time to condense that knowledge (in addition to a lot of industry research) into the following infographic, for your enlightenment!

We hope you’ll find the information informative and interesting, feel free to click on the infographic for a (slightly) larger version!

Or, click here (or scroll down) for a text only transcript of the data.

Text Only:

Most common methods of Food Transportation

According to NAFTA food transportation in the US happens in the following modes:

• 70.5% of food transportation in the US is via Truck,
• 17% via Rail
• 8% via Ship
• and 4.5% via Air.

Typical Transport Vehicle Proportions

There are many various sizes of vehicles, so we’ve used some of the more common vehicle sizes in our comparison. The vehicles we chose were the following sizes:

• Trucks: (Length 70-80 ft)
• Planes – Boeing 747: (Length 515 ft)
• Ships – Ultra Large Container Vessel: Length 12000 ft 

Global distribution of the worlds 100 busiest Ocean ports:

Our map shows the distribution of the 100 busiest ocean ports by continent. Here’s the data in simple table format:

(source: http://aapa-ports.org/)

How much of the US Food Supply is imported?

Although the US produces large quantities of food, there are certain food items that need to be imported:

• 20% of all our food is imported
• 70% of our seafood
• 35% of our produce

(source: http://www.fdaimports.com/blog/how-much-of-u-s-food-is-imported/) 

How our fruit is imported:

Our infographic shows the distribution of fruit import methods. This data is important because of the perishable nature of fruit.

View the chart in the infographic above to view the distribution of fruit transport among Airplanes, Ships and Trucks.
(source: http://www.gis.smumn.edu/GradProjects/BernatzG.pdf)

US Land ports

The chart below shows the land ports that see the highest value of goods ship through them.

(source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/trade-and-transportation-statistics/) 

States producing the most food

Take a look at the map in our infographic for a breakdown of the states producing the most food. No judgement, some states focus on non-food items! 🙂

(source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-income-and-wealth-statistics.aspx#.UbZKMfbTX-U)

What foods do we import the most?

This chart shows the food items we most heavily rely on foreign imports for, spread out over the last few years:

(source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-food-imports.aspx#.UbZNefbTX-U)

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