DOT Home > Freight Transportation > National Freight Policy
The freight transportation system is a mixture of public and private infrastructure, private carriers and shippers, public planning and regulatory bodies, and other players interacting at global, national, regional, and local scales. The challenges of growing demands for freight movements in the face of physical, economic, and environmental limits are beyond the capabilities of any one private entity, level of government, or community of interest. Collaboration among diverse public and private parties is required to meet the challenges effectively.
The Framework for a National Freight Policy is a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and its partners in the public and private sectors to inventory existing and proposed strategies, tactics, and activities to improve freight transportation. It is structured to identify examples of good practice, actions which would benefit from increased collaboration, conflicts needing resolution, and issues needing more attention. The Framework was conceived in discussions of the Freight Roundtable of the Transportation Research Board and refined by a working group of career policy officials from throughout USDOT. The Framework can include a broad range of activities and proposals from many diverse interests. The inclusion of activities and proposals in the Framework does not imply Department of Transportation endorsement or industry consensus.
The Framework arranges related activities into tactics, which are combined into strategies that are organized under seven basic objectives. Activities include major or illustrative projects, specific institutional and financial arrangements, individual regulations, and other specific actions. Tactics are typically programs that finance and guide individual projects or sets of actions to deal with a particular issue. Strategies are typically general policies or long range plans that deal with several issues. Every strategy has at least one tactic and every tactic has at least one activity. A tactic can support more than one strategy, and strategies typically relate to more than one objective.
The Framework includes existing policies, programs, and activities of USDOT compiled by the Office of Freight Management and Operations of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), as well as existing activities and formally adopted proposals of public and private organizations who have provided input to the Framework. The Framework will evolve as more organizations contribute existing and proposed strategies, tactics, and activities.
The Framework is only as complete as the input provided by its contributors. Visit the How to Contribute page to learn more about contributing to the Framework.