TRB Electronic Circular E-C146: Trucking 101: An Industry Primer is designed to provide a basic picture of the structure of the U.S. trucking industry for public officials, policy makers, engineers, administrators, planners, academic researchers, journalists, and anyone who needs to think about issues affecting, or affected by, trucking.

The report emphasizes that many of the distinct parts of the trucking industry have different characteristics that are policy-relevant, such as different operational conditions, different compensation practices, and different customers. In addition, the report suggests that the effective use of various types of publicly available data on the industry requires some understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each data source as well as knowledge of how different data sources link to or omit particular parts of the industry.