Carrier Geography Analysis

Analysis

· as of August 1, 2026

The sharpest divergence in this dataset is not between large and small states by carrier count, but between carrier count and fleet scale. Georgia (GA), with 136,276 registered carriers (4.95% of the national total), reports total power units of 7,220,815 and an average fleet size of 57.9 units per carrier. California, which has nearly three times as many carriers at 378,789, averages only 34.3 power units per carrier. That gap suggests California's registry is weighted toward smaller, owner-operator style operations, while Georgia's carrier population skews toward mid-to-large fleets, a pattern consistent with Georgia's role as a Southeast logistics hub anchored by the Atlanta metro and major intermodal infrastructure.

Massachusetts presents the most pronounced version of this fleet-size divergence among states with meaningful carrier counts. Its 48,592 carriers report an average of 96.9 power units, more than double Florida's 47.7 and more than 2.8 times California's 34.3. The underlying total power unit figure for Massachusetts is 4,422,614, which is larger than Pennsylvania's 3,702,473 despite Pennsylvania having more than twice the carrier count at 101,777. This likely reflects a concentration of large regional and national fleets domiciled in Massachusetts for regulatory or operational reasons, though the data does not distinguish between operating bases and registration addresses.

At the national level, 2,752,490 carriers are registered across 115 jurisdiction codes, with total reported drivers of 16,952,535. The top five states alone account for 40.2% of carrier registrations. The dataset also includes non-US entries such as Canadian provinces (Ontario at 11,000 carriers, British Columbia at 3,879, Alberta at 3,784) and a small number of records associated with codes that appear to correspond to Mexican states and other international jurisdictions, which is consistent with FMCSA's practice of registering foreign carriers authorized to operate in US commerce.

Several small-count entries show extreme average fleet sizes that are almost certainly artifacts of data quality issues rather than operational reality. The Yukon Territory (YT) entry, with 35 carriers and 95,110 total power units yielding an average of 2,972.2, and the Virgin Islands (VI) entry with 114 carriers and 50,622 power units at 460.2 average, warrant scrutiny before citation. These figures may reflect data entry anomalies or fleet equipment registered under jurisdiction codes for administrative reasons.

The concentration of carrier registrations in coastal and Sunbelt states has been a persistent feature of FMCSA data over the past decade, and the current distribution, with California alone at nearly 14% of all carriers, is consistent with long-running trends in population growth, port activity, and owner-operator formation in high-density metro markets.