Self-employment method
General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance
565,284 people filed as a nonemployer business under this industry code in 2022 — no payroll, no employees, just them. These are gross receipts reported to the IRS, before any expense is taken out.
Median GROSS RECEIPTS for the year — money in, before rent, materials, fuel, insurance or tax. This is not take-home pay.
Share who grossed under $10,000 for the whole year — before expenses.
The middle half, in gross receipts. A quarter of filers took less than the lower figure.
Source: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2022 · view
How often it does not work out
Of the 565,284 people who filed under this code in 2022, 9.67% grossed under $10,000 for the entire year — before a single expense was deducted.
That is a floor, not an estimate. Census publishes GROSS RECEIPTS, not net income. Everyone inside that share earned less than the figure suggests once rent, materials, mileage, insurance and self-employment tax came out — and filers who grossed well above the threshold may still have netted nothing. The true share of people who earn nothing meaningful from this is higher than the number above, never lower.
Denominator: establishments_total = 565,284 · US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2022 · view
Every filer, by what they grossed
The full distribution Census publishes. The median above is interpolated inside the band that holds the 50th percentile.
| Gross receipts for the year | Filers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $5,000 | 26,855 | 4.8% |
| $5,000 to $9,999 | 27,796 | 4.9% |
| $10,000 to $24,999 | 75,845 | 13.4% |
| $25,000 to $49,999 | 83,391 | 14.8% |
| $50,000 to $99,999 | 111,702 | 19.8% |
| $100,000 to $249,999 | 162,372 | 28.7% |
| $250,000 to $499,999 | 57,791 | 10.2% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 13,636 | 2.4% |
| $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 | 5,896 | 1.0% |
Who this suits
At $80,776 a year — $6,731 a month — the midpoint filer under this code is turning over more than most nonemployer businesses ever do. Read it as turnover: the bigger the revenue, the bigger the costs hiding inside it.
565,284 filings make this a crowded field. Crowding is not automatically bad, but it does mean the price of the work is set by whoever will do it cheapest.
42.4% of filers grossed $100,000 or more. At that share the upper band is not an exception, it is a large minority of the field — though gross receipts at this level usually carry proportionate costs.
Owner-operator trucking suits people who track cost per mile honestly, including the depreciation nobody invoices for, and treat maintenance as a scheduled expense.
There is no training requirement to file under this code — which is precisely why so many people appear in the bottom bands. Entry being free is not the same as the work being viable.
Who should not do this
Bottom quarter under $28,245, top quarter over $190,878: 6.8x, or $13,552 a month. At this stretch the label has stopped describing one occupation, and every summary statistic about it — including the midpoint — should be treated with suspicion.
The bottom quarter of General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance earns under $28,245 — $21,775 below the $50,020 national midpoint, or $13.57 an hour. A floor that low means the occupation cannot be judged on its median alone; a quarter of the people in it are somewhere else entirely.
Do not start this if a major repair would end you. Depreciation and maintenance are what separate the gross receipts below from anything you keep.
Of the 565,284 people who filed as General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance in 2022, 9.7% — 54,662 of them — grossed under $10,000 for the whole year before expenses. That is the mildest bottom band anywhere in this dataset, and it still describes roughly one filer in eight.
That share is a floor, not an estimate: $10,000 is revenue, not earnings. Everyone counted inside it kept less than $10,000, and an unknown number of the filers above it also finished the year with nothing after costs.
What the spread tells you
A ratio of 6.8x between the quarters is the signature of a winner-take-most distribution. $80,776 is a real number about a real population, but nobody entering General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance should plan around it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $28,245 at the 25th percentile, $80,776 at the midpoint, $190,878 at the 75th. $162,633 separates the quarter of General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $190,878. Reaching it from the $80,776 midpoint is $110,102 a year; reaching it from the $28,245 that the bottom quarter of General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance earn is $162,633.
From $80,776 the drop to $28,245 is $52,531 and the climb to $190,878 is $110,102. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Per hour of a full-time year, the middle of General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance takes $38.83 in revenue — $13.57 at the bottom quarter and $91.76 at the top. Costs have not been deducted from any of those figures, so none of them is an hourly wage.
The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 26,855 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 27,796. $10,000 to $24,999, 75,845. Over $100,000, 239,695 — and 77,323 over $250,000.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Read every figure here as GROSS RECEIPTS rather than income. $80,776 is turnover — the money that passed through General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance before expenses. What is left after costs is a different and much smaller number that this dataset does not publish.
The hourly number on this page is $80,776 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else