Washington, D.C. — Some Earth Day trivia: What weighs 4,000 tons, carries the load of several hundred trucks, and is still the greenest way to move freight over land? A freight train, of course. Given rail’s scale of movement and the size of the U.S., it makes sense that trains would be the most efficient choice to haul freight from sea to shining sea.

But railroads don’t just rely on physics for efficiency – they’re constantly deploying tech that enables trains to move more for less (less fuel, less pollution, less time). Fuel management systems, advanced routing software, idling reduction tech, more efficient locomotives and various other enhancements have vastly improved efficiency. Case in point: while freight rail today moves nearly twice as much as it did in 1980, its fuel consumption is actually down.

Here are five stats that showcase rail’s environmental credentials:

  1. Trains are four times more efficient than trucks – meaning greenhouse gases fall by 75% when freight is moved by rail rather than trucks.

  1. Today’s freight trains can move one ton of goods over 480 miles on a single gallon of fuel, up from 396 miles in 2000.

  1. If just 10% of the freight moved by the largest trucks moved by rail instead, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by over 17 million tons. That’s the equivalent of removing 3.4 million cars from our highways or planting 262 million trees.

  1. While freight railroads haul one-third of U.S. exports and intercity freight, they account for just 2% of greenhouse gases from the transportation sector.

  1. Thanks to redesigned railcars, the average freight train in 2020 could haul about 31% more tonnage than it could in 2000 (3,817 tons in 2020 versus 2,923 in 2000).

Updated April 2021.