Analysis of the Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey for Trucks ... - About

3.0 Analysis of the Distribution of the
Truck Fleet
This section focuses on the distribution of the truck fleet by vehicle configuration, region, and
state. The first part of this section analyzes the entire truck fleet with a brief discussion of the 4axles
or less truck fleet. The second part evaluates the 5-axles or more truck fleet. The vehicle
configuration is derived by the Bureau of the Census from questions 5, 6, and 10 on the 1992
survey as shown in Appendix I. Appendix H gives details on the vehicle configuration variable
and its use.
3.1 Analysis Structure
This section evaluates the VIUS database by the following characteristics:
# 5 Vehicle Configuration Classes and 31 Subclasses (as defined in Table 2.1)
# 8 Vehicle Groups (as defined in Section 2.2)
# 5 Regions (as defined in Section 2.3 and Figure 2.3-1)
# 50 States and the District of Columbia
3.2 Observations on the Size of the Total Truck Fleet
The following observations focus primarily on the 1997 total truck fleet (note exclusions in
Section 1.3) with some selected comparisons made with the 1992 total truck fleet. Table 3.2-1
describes the number of vehicles in a configuration class, by region for 1997. Table 3.2-2 rank
orders the 1997 state populations. For detailed tables of the composition of the 1992 and 1997
truck fleet, Appendix A contains population numbers for the total truck fleet broken down by
configuration class, by state, by region—for 1997 and 1992.
NATIONWIDE - 1997
# The 1997 total truck fleet contained 75 million trucks.
REGIONAL VARIATIONS - 1997
# One-third of the total fleet was registered in the North Central region.
# The other four regions, each contained about one-sixth of the total truck population.
STATE VARIATIONS - 1997
# California had the largest state truck population (382,118 trucks) which accounted for about
eight percent (8.32%) of the national truck fleet.
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