Across a dataset of nearly 78,000 carrier records spanning 11 states, roughly 80% of trucking companies have no website at all — mostly because small carriers (68–89% of carriers run 0–1 trucks) are focused on keeping trucks moving, not marketing, and never got around to it.
This isn’t a guess — it’s a real, sourced number pulled directly from carrier-authority data across 11 states. The pattern holds regardless of state: the vast majority of active carriers are small (0–1 power units), and for an owner-operator running the truck themselves, a website reasonably falls to the bottom of the priority list next to dispatching loads and keeping equipment maintained.
What that gap actually costs a carrier
The absence of a website doesn’t just mean a missed marketing opportunity — it’s a trust gap. Brokers increasingly check a carrier online before calling, and a company with no online presence at all reads as harder to vet, which can mean fewer inbound load offers and more time spent competing purely on rate instead of relationships.
Why this is changing now
As broker vetting shifts online and AI-powered search tools (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity) become a normal way people research vendors, the carriers with an established, findable online presence increasingly stand out from the 80% who don’t — a gap that’s only getting more visible over time, not less.