LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Transportation, Trucking & Railroad (2026)

Key Takeaways

In transportation, trucking and railroad, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 28.6%. Replies to the connection note average 3.6%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 10.9%. Those numbers come from 103,286 connection requests sent by 83 transportation, trucking and railroad accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. All three run above the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%.

Transportation / Trucking / Railroad vs. the platform average

Metric	Transportation / Trucking / Railroad	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	28.6%	28.5%	+0.1 pts	14th of 38
Connection-note reply	3.6%	3.0%	+0.6 pts	6th of 38
Message reply after acceptance	10.9%	10.4%	+0.5 pts	18th of 38

Across the 38 industries with at least 50 sending accounts, acceptance runs from 21.8% (telecommunications) to 36.5% (staffing & recruiting). Note replies run from 1.8% to 6.6%, and message replies from 7.2% to 18.9%.

What the numbers say about transportation outreach

Transportation, trucking and railroad is one of five reported industries above the platform on all three measures, alongside staffing and recruiting, venture capital and private equity, retail, and logistics and supply chain. It is also the one that clears the bar by the least: acceptance is 0.1 points above the platform and message replies 0.5 points above, the thinnest margins of the five on both.

The note is where it stands out. Note replies of 3.6% rank 6th of 38, 0.6 points above the 3.0% cross-industry average and ahead of logistics and supply chain at 3.4%. End to end the sector converts about 3.1 in every 100 recipients, 15th of 38 and a fraction above the platform’s 3.0. That figure multiplies acceptance by message replies, so the note advantage does not show up in it at all.

Its closest matches are hospital and health care, electrical and electronic manufacturing, and management consulting, each within a point of the platform on acceptance. The more telling comparison is logistics and supply chain, a neighbour by name, which accepts at 32.3% and converts about 3.8 per 100. With 83 accounts here and 72 in logistics, both samples are small, but the gap at the connection request is a reason not to borrow one sector’s benchmark for the other.

If your numbers sit below these

The dataset says where an account sits, not why. From what we see in campaigns, three gaps come up most often in this sector, and they point at different problems.

Acceptance under 28.6%. The sector line is the platform line, 14th of 38, so there is no industry allowance to claim. From what we see in campaigns, a number below it usually means a list built on company type and size rather than on the person who controls the contract or the lane.

Message replies under 10.9%. Half a point above the platform and 18th of 38. Together with acceptance it decides the end-to-end result, and the sector’s margin over 3.0 per 100 is thin enough that a modest shortfall here puts it under the platform.

Note replies under 3.6%. This is the sector’s one clear strength, 6th of 38. Platform-wide, note replies fell from 3.5% in May 2025 to 2.2% in April 2026 and the report does not break that decline out by industry, so a recent campaign a little under the sector line may simply be tracking the trend. Well under it usually means the note has gone generic.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• How many LinkedIn invites can you send a week?
• Personalising a LinkedIn message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula
• Tips for building a LinkedIn content strategy for B2B sales
• The best AI lead generation software to add to your stack

Frequently asked questions

What is a good LinkedIn acceptance rate in transportation and trucking?

28.6% is the sector average, 0.1 points above the 28.5% cross-industry figure and 14th of 38 reported industries. The sector sits on the platform line, so above 30% is a strong result and anything under 28.5% is below both the sector and the platform.

Do connection notes work for transportation and trucking companies?

Better than in most industries. Transportation, trucking and railroad accounts average 3.6% note replies, 6th of 38 against a 3.0% platform average, across 83 accounts and 103,286 requests. Acceptance and message replies sit within a point of the platform, so the note is the sector’s clearest edge.

How does transportation and trucking compare with other industries?

Acceptance ranks 14th of 38, note replies 6th and message replies 18th. End to end about 3.1 in 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, 15th of 38 and just ahead of the roughly 3.0 across all industries. It is one of five industries above the platform on all three measures.

How this data was collected

Transportation / Trucking / Railroad is reported from 83 accounts and 103,286 connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026, drawn from the LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 dataset of 13.2 million requests across 13,302 accounts. That report carries the full methodology, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, company size and month that are not repeated here.

Two things to hold in mind while reading any of these figures. The industry is the sender’s, taken from their company profile, not the recipient’s. And only industries with at least 50 sending accounts are reported at all: below that, a single unusual account moves the average by several points, which is why some of the most extreme numbers in the full appendix are not published here.

Related industry benchmarks

• Hospital & Health Care, 27.7% acceptance and 10.6% message replies
• Management Consulting, 28.0% acceptance and 9.2% message replies
• Real Estate, 28.4% acceptance and 11.8% message replies
• All industry benchmarks

Grade your own outreach against these numbers

Enter your own acceptance and reply rates and grade your outreach against the transportation, trucking and railroad benchmark, plus see where you sit among all 38 reported industries. No signup.

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Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.