Perspective: How Important Are Truck Drivers To Easter In America?

Americans, obviously, like their stuff. The entire world knows it. Especially at holiday time, where by some accounts we seemingly take every opportunity and make any excuse to increase our consumption of various consumer goods.

That's not to say that the reason and spirit for the season is lost on people, by any means, as millions of Christians are celebrating the Resurrection, but the various traditions, rituals and accessories at Easter time also require truckloads and truckloads of physical stock to support it. It is during these times of high consumption that we like to remind the General Public just how important the trucking industry is.

Must of this holiday consumption is food-related, in the form of holiday meals, eggs and candy, and every time you turn around, another brand is coming up with more specialized themed products, like the pastel M&M's and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Around one-third of the estimated $18.4 billion spent on Easter-related retail sales in 2017 will be on food. With around 88% of American parents doing up Easter baskets for their children, here's some Easter by the numbers:

Another $2.9 billion will be used on Easter gifts, while $3.3 billion will be spent on clothing, and another $3 billion for flowers, decorations, and greeting cards. The effective bottom line of all of this is that record amounts of consumer goods need to be moved from place-to-place, as always.

Other fun Easter stats:

• Easter Cards:

  Still quite popular, despite electronic alternatives, we send about 43 million per year.

• Egg Hunts:

  Winter Haven, FL boasts the largest in the country, with almost 10,000 children searching for over 500,000 eggs every year.

• Chocolate Bunnies:

  90 million chocolate bunnies are produced every year. About 76% of consumers say that the ears should be eaten first. The other 24% are split between the feet, tail, and "other" just to spite them.

External Links:

National Retail Federation Says Later Easter Expected To Bring Record Spending

Sweet Easter Facts

Easter by the Numbers

Dear God. Whoever craeted that Peeps pizza abomination should be stoned...or maybe they already were. Either way, just looking at it makes me wanna dry heave. 🤢

My first job out of college was as a line haul dispatcher at a long gone ltl company, McLean Trucking. One of our customers made the plastic "Easter Grass" that you put in the kids baskets.They would compress it some but a full trailer would still barely move the scale.

My first job out of college was as a line haul dispatcher at a long gone ltl company, McLean Trucking. One of our customers made the plastic "Easter Grass" that you put in the kids baskets.They would compress it some but a full trailer would still barely move the scale.

McLean? They went bust when, ...30 years ago? I don't remember exactly...

Wow...one of the original common carrier pioneers of intermodal and a couple of related spin-offs if memory serves me correctly.

Back to Easter...one of the many eating holidays that creates an intensity of workload for grocery drivers and an opportunity to make some very healthy paychecks. Nothing like the month leading up to Christmas and New Years, none the less, I'll take it though.

The ltl business shut down less than a year after I started in the mid 80s. A lot shut down around then due to deregulation.

Funny thing was that I grew up around my family's trucking business and had been driving class b dump trucks, pulling low boys and dump trailers since before I was 18. Had the old pre-cdl Ohio chauffeurs license. First weekend they had one of the yard guys take the "college kid" out and show him how to hook up a trailer. He asked me if I wanted to try and drive. I played dumb and said sure. We get into a GMC Brigadier with a 10 speed and take off down the access road to where the loaded vans were. I take off double clutching away and even popped the button and get it into 6th and I can see him looking at me funny out of the corner of my eye. He points out the trailer and when I lined it up perfectly without looking out the daycab window he knew he had been had and busted out laughing.

We probably had about 200 drivers at that terminal and within 24 hours they all had heard the story.

My first job out of college was as a line haul dispatcher at a long gone ltl company, McLean Trucking. One of our customers made the plastic "Easter Grass" that you put in the kids baskets.They would compress it some but a full trailer would still barely move the scale.

McLean? They went bust when, ...30 years ago? I don't remember exactly...

Wow...one of the original common carrier pioneers of intermodal and a couple of related spin-offs if memory serves me correctly.

Back to Easter...one of the many eating holidays that creates an intensity of workload for grocery drivers and an opportunity to make some very healthy paychecks. Nothing like the month leading up to Christmas and New Years, none the less, I'll take it though.