The transportation business has been a constantly changing scene in the United States.  Trends change as technology and infrastructure change, as well as changes in business models.  As businesses have become more specialized, the need for transportation of goods has become a greater fixture of our economy and the back drop of this country.

The transportation of goods has been necessary for the existence of human development since its conception.  From carrying picked fruit and berries as they traversed the unpaved countryside to the creation of a transportation infrastructure designed to convoy military quickly in case of foreign attack.  The latter also had a secondary effect to the trends in transportation of goods.

In the earliest history of this country, transportation of mass amounts of goods relied on the seas traveling up and down the eastern seaboard and continuing down through the tip of South America to get to the west coast.  Then it eventually moved to the rail system, which still today moves the larger share of goods.  The rail system revolutionized the movement of goods, helping the populations that had settled throughout the central states get their excess product to further reaches.

The Interstate system created a new trend in the movement of goods.  The trucking industry has seen large growth due to the creation of the Interstate Highway system.  Just as it transformed the journey President Eisenhower once took along the Lincoln Highway from a 2 month journey to a 2 week journey, it has sped up the movement of goods across the country.  The trucking industry represents about 30% of the transportation of goods, with a growth that could reach 36% by 2020.