Data centers pulling on already shrinking pool of US truck capacity

Data centers designed to support artificial intelligence (AI) are taking a large bite out of transportation capacity, putting more pressure on already rising transportation costs.

Data centers not only consume gigawatts of electricity, but also transportation capacity on the ocean, in the air and on rail tracks and highways. And demand for that capacity isn’t slowing down.

Just how big is the freight demand generated by data center construction?

In terms of trucking alone, each gigawatt of US data center expansion requires 100,000 truckloads, according to Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics.

“The US has built roughly 20 gigawatts [GW] of new capacity since the AI boom took off in 2023, which works out to about 2 million truckloads already moved,” Croke said in an interview.

US data center capacity is expected to increase from approximately 24 GW to 110 GW between 2026 and 2030, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s 86 GW, or approximately 8.6 million truckloads, according to Croke’s estimate.

“Do we have the capacity to support this? Right now, we don’t,” said Keith Prather, managing director and partner at Armada Corporate Intelligence. “What’s saving us at the moment is that other elements of construction, such as housing, are weak.”

A recent report by Synergy Research Group shows that the total capacity of US data centers will double in the next three years as booming demand drives the aggressive buildout of the facilities owned by hyperscale operators.

That’s certain to cut into capacity available to other shippers, and to boost pricing not just for flatbed and specialized freight, but all categories of goods. A lack of transportation capacity could become an anchor slowing faster data center growth.

‘Real and sustained increase’

Plenty of different areas have exposure to data center construction, and they’re all drawing on a diminished pool of transportation capacity, especially in the US truckload market.

“Every major component of the buildout moves by truck: generators, transformers, cooling systems, structural steel,” said Melissa Suedbeck, vice president of operations at TA Dedicated, a US-based transportation subsidiary of Canada’s TFI International.

“We have seen a real and sustained increase in demand for open-deck capacity to move power modules for data centers,” Suedbeck told the Journal of Commerce. The data center boom “is one of the most active demand drivers in the freight market right now.”

Expanding demand is colliding with short supply. How much capacity has left the US trucking market is hard to fix. Large, public truckload carriers have cut their truck counts 15.5% since 2022, according to the Journal of Commerce Truckload Capacity Index.

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) estimates truck fleets have cut 2.4% of their trucks and idled another 10%. ATRI’s driver-per-truck ratio for 2025, released in June, was 0.9, which means approximately nine drivers are available for every 10 trucks.

The rate of attrition is accelerating, according to trucking analysts and carrier executives. Truck drivers are being squeezed out of the market at a pace not seen in decades — perhaps since the national commercial driver’s license was introduced in 1992.

“We look at it like an ecosystem,” Frank Lonegro, CEO of truckload carrier Landstar System, said of the data center market during an earnings call in July. “Building products has got a piece of it, energy has got a piece of it, machinery got a piece of it.”

Landstar, with its open-deck and platform trailer business, has a piece of it, too.

“We continue to see strong demand in that space and a continuing need for additional capacity,” Lonegro said. There’s been no hint of a “pullback” in demand, he added.

Opposition shifting centers

Growing political opposition to data centers, not just in the US but worldwide, may also slow the buildout’s impact. S&P Global, the parent company of the Journal of Commerce, reports there have been nearly 300 bans or moratoriums on new data centers in the US.

Those bans, however, may simply shift data centers to different locations. “We’re now talking about rural destinations for 70% of data centers,” said Prather. “North Dakota is taking every data center that Minnesota is blocking right now.”

Data center demand, despite growing political opposition, remains strong enough to sideline other types of construction, Prather told the Journal of Commerce. “Most construction companies have their capacity locked up until 2028 or 2029,” he said.

“Data center equipment providers are competing for open-deck capacity against construction, energy, and heavy manufacturing shippers at the same time,” said TA Dedicated’s Suedbeck, adding that competition will broaden and become more intense.

“Right now is the peak construction wave, which is where the flatbed pressure concentrates,” she said, noting once construction is complete, “then the market shifts toward equipping and scaling,” installing components such as server racks.

“The freight mix changes, but the volume does not disappear,” Suedbeck said.

Diversion of trucks to data center construction has a direct and indirect effect on truck capacity. First, it takes capacity away from other sectors, such as retail. Second, it sends trucks to locations that make it difficult for subsequent users to access them.

“It’s dislocating that capacity by sending it to destinations like North Dakota,” Prather said. “We need to get the truck back to somewhere that it can pick up its next load.”

That next load may go straight back to the construction site.

“If I wanted to really make money in trucking, I’d go and do heavy haul for the next four years,” said DAT’s Croke.

This article was originally published by the Journal of Commerce on Aug. 7, 2026.