Directory measurement · containerhelper.com (measured against the FMCSA census) · listed carriers
Observation range: 1974-01-01–2026-01-01. Source as of 2026-09-04. 47 observations.
Interpret this report
NOT A GROWTH SERIES. MUST NOT BE CAPTIONED AS ONE. It is built from companies that are in this directory TODAY, so every company that registered in an earlier year and has since ceased is missing from that year, and the line slopes upward regardless of what the industry actually did. The bias compounds: our FMCSA ingest additionally took only carriers filing an MCS-150 since 2022, which removes older survivors too. Its legitimate use is COMPARISON — set it against fmcsa_usdot_registrations_by_year (dim "issued"), which counts the whole census including the inactive, and the gap between the two shapes is the bias made visible. Note also that the national series shows 1974 and 2015 to be bulk administrative load years, so those years are artifacts here as well.
Counts describe records in this directory. Companies can appear in more than one service or port category, so categories should not be added to estimate a market total.
Original source and definitions · Licence: Internal measurement against a U.S. federal government work · Directory methodology
Download all observations (CSV)
View the data table (47 rows)
| Period | Category | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1974-01-01 | listed carriers | 741 |
| 1981-01-01 | listed carriers | 14 |
| 1982-01-01 | listed carriers | 60 |
| 1983-01-01 | listed carriers | 70 |
| 1984-01-01 | listed carriers | 78 |
| 1985-01-01 | listed carriers | 82 |
| 1986-01-01 | listed carriers | 100 |
| 1987-01-01 | listed carriers | 135 |
| 1988-01-01 | listed carriers | 109 |
| 1989-01-01 | listed carriers | 126 |
| 1990-01-01 | listed carriers | 134 |
| 1991-01-01 | listed carriers | 121 |
| 1992-01-01 | listed carriers | 144 |
| 1993-01-01 | listed carriers | 181 |
| 1994-01-01 | listed carriers | 168 |
| 1995-01-01 | listed carriers | 155 |
| 1996-01-01 | listed carriers | 152 |
| 1997-01-01 | listed carriers | 188 |
| 1998-01-01 | listed carriers | 183 |
| 1999-01-01 | listed carriers | 176 |
| 2000-01-01 | listed carriers | 237 |
| 2001-01-01 | listed carriers | 223 |
| 2002-01-01 | listed carriers | 272 |
| 2003-01-01 | listed carriers | 300 |
| 2004-01-01 | listed carriers | 363 |
| 2005-01-01 | listed carriers | 391 |
| 2006-01-01 | listed carriers | 377 |
| 2007-01-01 | listed carriers | 357 |
| 2008-01-01 | listed carriers | 342 |
| 2009-01-01 | listed carriers | 421 |
| 2010-01-01 | listed carriers | 405 |
| 2011-01-01 | listed carriers | 3,454 |
| 2012-01-01 | listed carriers | 490 |
| 2013-01-01 | listed carriers | 505 |
| 2014-01-01 | listed carriers | 570 |
| 2015-01-01 | listed carriers | 1,199 |
| 2016-01-01 | listed carriers | 951 |
| 2017-01-01 | listed carriers | 1,513 |
| 2018-01-01 | listed carriers | 1,874 |
| 2019-01-01 | listed carriers | 2,267 |
| 2020-01-01 | listed carriers | 3,263 |
| 2021-01-01 | listed carriers | 4,178 |
| 2022-01-01 | listed carriers | 5,159 |
| 2023-01-01 | listed carriers | 4,384 |
| 2024-01-01 | listed carriers | 3,904 |
| 2025-01-01 | listed carriers | 4,912 |
| 2026-01-01 | listed carriers | 2,926 |