Living on the East Coast I travel I-95 a lot. There’s certainly a lot of trucks on I-95, but there’s also a ton of “normal” traffic as well.
I thought there were a lot of trucks on 95 but I recently took a drive from Louisville to Muncie and back on I-65. Good lord! I swear that repeatedly I passed lines of nothing but trucks at least 3-4 miles long. Most of the trip it felt like we were literally the only non-truck on the highway.
What are other highways with super-heavy truck traffic?
I-10 out of Los Angeles. If it lands at Long Beach or San Pedro it trucks out of SoCal on I-10. Ditto I-5. The Grapevine is notorious for its truck traffic. Slow truck traffic.
I-35 has to be up there somewhere, being as I understand it, one of the very few interstates that connects Canada and Mexico, as well as going through San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Des Moines, Minneapolis/St. Paul & Duluth on the way, as well as connecting with all the other interstates in those cities.
I know that in Texas, it’s loaded with trucks pretty much all the time.
There are maps of truck traffic on the interstate highway system, for example:
https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/nat_freight_stats/nhsavglhft2015.htm
The I-90 between Chicago and Gary is a drive you won’t soon forget if you go by car.
When I would drive it, my nerves were keenly on edge, being surrounded by nothing but semis. Knowing that one slip-up at sixty-five mph would have me just a red smear on the highway, that would require a shovel to clean up kept my eyes wide open.
That’s what I was going to say.
You can see it as the throbbing read line south of Dallas on @PastTense 's map. I hate that stretch of highway.
I-5 up the backbone of California seems to have a ton of truck traffic, especially away from the big cities. Since California has a lower speed limit for trucks versus cars, very often the right lane is a line of trucks going 55 mph, while the left lane is all cars going 80.
ETA: And I see from the map that I’m right, at least compared to other highways on the West Coast, although not as much as some other highways. Interesting that most other highways in the west have relatively thin lines. Maybe most goods that need to pass through that region go by train instead of truck?
I 94 294 the skyway yeah. It’s crazy with trucks and speeding cars, I always see someone making a suicide maneuver crossing multiple lanes without caution to reach their exit in the nick of time. All the rumpled guard rails are evidence of how often that maneuver fails.
I do like the open tollways. Never been charged yet.
I 75 is also trucker country.
Where I live it is essentially the gateway to New England. I’m within 5 minutes of I-76 (the Pennsylvania Turnpike), Interstate 81, and US Route 11. Those in turn connect to Interstates 70, 78, 80, 83, 84, and 95 within 90 miles, plus lesser but still important routes like US 1, US 15, and US 22. If you want to go northeast and you’re not coming straight up the coast or across I-80 you pass through Carlisle.
As a result, it has become a trucking and distribution Mecca. It is quite literally impossible to drive on a highway here without seeing more trucks than cars. If you find Carlisle on Google Earth and zoom out you’ll see how strategically located it is for transportation, and the transportation industry has essentially taken it over outside of the town itself.
Cross Bronx Expressway. Not only a lot of trucks, but there are steep walls on either side, so you’re hemmed in by them.
Before they get to the I-10 or I-5 they have to travel the 710 (Long Beach) or the 110 (San Pedro). I commuted the 710 from Alhambra to Long Beach for nearly 10 years and the ratio was easily one truck for every five cars.
On I-81 if you’re travelling late you may see 10 trucks for every car.
Not surprised that I-80 is a throbbing mass of red across the Midwest, but I’m a little surprised that I-40 seems to have more truck traffic than I-70. All three highways are quite capable of giving you a death grip on your steering wheel on a long trip, particularly on any of their bridges across the Mississippi River.
I-44 around Joplin, Missouri. The city is home to several trucking-company depots, training centers, and what have you. St. Louis and its Mississippi River transportation apparatus are a couple hundred miles to the east, Oklahoma and its oil industry to the west.
[Nitpick]
I-65 doesnt go to Muncie, IN. It’s I-65 from Louisville to Indianapolis, then a few miles on the I-465 beltway, then I-69 to near (but not in) Muncie. I-65 is maybe 60-80 miles from Muncie.
[/nitpick]
I-40.
(Why do we put up with Discourse’s inane “AI”?
Ontario Highway 401 is certainly a strong candidate. The part that runs over the top of Toronto is the busiest highway in North America, with 18 lanes at some points, and the highway overall is 828 km long stretching from Windsor to the Quebec border. And I can tell you from first-hand observation that the truck traffic is immense, predominantly tractor-trailers.
Nearly all the shipping crosses Arkansas on I-40.
There’s always construction somewhere between Litlle Rock and Forrest City. I can’t think of any period in 20 years I-40 wasn’t being worked on.
The state cops love to stake it out for drug or human trafficking.
If you mean the highest number of trucks per year, then I’m another vote for I-90, but between Toledo and Chicago. Between the ports, the farms, the rail yards, and the factories, there’s just a lot of stuff to move through there. It mostly goes east to New York or south down the East Coast.
But if you mean the highest ratio of trucks to passenger vehicles, then 81 through Virginia deserves a mention. Many moons ago I traveled it regularly, going from the DC area down to colleges to visit friends and brother. I almost never saw another car, just convoys of trucks so thick I was afraid to get to an off-ramp. I nearly ran out of gas once just because I couldn’t get over.
Finally a kind trucker woke up enough to see my signal and let me off the highway. It was a near thing though.
…and the 401 also has “turnpike doubles”, transport trucks with two full-size trailers. These trucks have banners across the back bearing a simple outline of the very long truck and trailer combination, as a advisory to people considering passing them that it might take a while. No words required.
These are the closest thing that Ontario has to road trains.