I'll start by inspecting the freight tables.

Now let me explore the freight flows.

Now the maps. First, the four Pennsylvania freight regions shaded by total freight value.

Now the complete picture: the region choropleth plus two-way flow lines to the top partner regions.

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Pennsylvania's 2022 Freight, by Region, Commodity, Mode and Partner

All figures are FAF6.0 (2022). Tonnage is thousand short tons; value is million 2022 constant dollars. FAF records shipment origin and destination between whole-county freight regions — it is not measured truck volume on any particular highway.

1. The four Pennsylvania freight regions

Pennsylvania is split into four FAF zones: Philadelphia (421), Pittsburgh (422), Allentown (423) and the remainder of the state (429). Harrisburg, Erie and Scranton are all in the remainder.

Pennsylvania Freight Regions by Value⬇ Image

Map legend: each polygon is one FAF zone, shaded by total 2022 freight value with that zone as origin or destination — dark blue ≥$500B, medium $300–500B, light under $300B. Click a region for its value and tonnage.

Because a shipment with both endpoints in Pennsylvania counts in both zones, these four sum to $1.76T while the underlying PA-touching total is $1.41T of value and 1.02 billion short tons of freight — the difference is the intra-state flows counted twice.

2. What moves, and how

⬇ CSV⬇ Image

Pharmaceuticals lead by a wide margin ($163B) on a trivial tonnage (3.4 M tons) — the classic high-value/low-weight profile. Mixed freight ($127B) and electronics ($122B) follow, then motorized vehicles, machinery and natural gas & other fossil products. In tonnage terms the order is completely different: natural gas and other fossil products alone account for 222 M tons, and other foodstuffs 44 M tons, while pharmaceuticals barely register.

⬇ CSV⬇ Image

Trucking carries 600.7 M tons (59%) and $1.01T of the $1.41T value. Pipeline is second in tonnage (218 M tons) but only $83B of value, rail third (141 M tons, $46B). Multiple modes & mail is modest in tonnage (50 M tons) but high in value ($219B — this is where parcel and intermodal electronics/pharma move). Water (9.9 M tons), air (0.38 M tons but $31B) and the residual "no domestic mode" code complete the list.

3. Who Pennsylvania trades with

PA Freight Regions and Their Biggest Partners⬇ Image

Map legend

• Blue polygons — the four Pennsylvania freight regions, shaded by total value (as above).
• Orange lines — every Pennsylvania-zone ↔ partner-zone pair with more than $12B of two-way freight; thicker/darker means bigger. Each line joins the two zone centroids and its popup splits the flow into "PA sends" and "PA receives".
• Green dots — the top 10 partner regions by two-way value; darker green is larger (≥$75B, $30–75B, $20–30B).

The biggest single lane is Rest of PA → the New Jersey part of the New York metro area, $28.1B; the single biggest inbound lane is NJ part of New York → Philadelphia, $24.5B. Note how lopsided some pairs are: Pittsburgh ships $36.7B to Cleveland but receives only $14.0B, while Los Angeles sends $22.3B into Pennsylvania against $9.8B going the other way. West Virginia stands out on tonnage rather than value — 26.5 M tons in and 36.1 M tons out, a coal-and-bulk relationship.

For completeness, Pennsylvania's overseas freight runs mostly through Europe ($65.7B, imports $44.5B), Eastern Asia ($39.3B, imports $32.4B) and Canada ($30.9B, nearly balanced). Those eight foreign regions carry no geometry in the data, so they cannot be drawn — they are reported here instead.

Caveats: for import records the "origin" is the U.S. port-of-entry region, not the true overseas origin, so a partner zone's inbound figure can include goods that only entered the country there. Consecutive FAF releases don't exist for this vintage (FAF6.0 is 2022 only), so nothing here is a trend.