Air Freight Transportation

As you can see from the pie chart above, when you look at the total tonnage of freight being transported by air vs all the other modes, the percentage is a miniscule 0.1%!!!

When you think of how much UPS & Fedex delivers by air it still comes as a surprise. I guess what it really shows is how much is being transported by truck. Where air transport comes into play is when you have high value items that are light and compact. So, letters & small packages are a perfect example.

Even so, when you look at the percentage cargo delivered by air vs all the other modes an a value basis, air transport still only encompasses a total of 3% of the total pie. In fact, trucking's share of the pie actually increases when you look at it on a value basis - see pie chart below.

Besides Fedex, there are additional carriers: DHL, TNT & UPS. Between the four of them, they account for the bulk of global cargo.

For a company to be optimally located... it's important to know where the various hubs are. The hubs could be "intermodal yards", FEDEX hubs, huge ship-yards and so on. 

Once you know where the hubs are and knowing what you do about your store locations or client locations, you can more easily identify where to locate distribution or manufacturing centers.