Tabulating tonnage data for transportation, shipping, mining, or freight operations — summarizing weights moved, materials handled, or freight tonnage by route, period, or commodity. The work tends to live where operational data meets reporting needs for management and regulators.
Most days revolve around the steady compilation of tonnage data from operational source records — weighbridge tickets, manifests, bills of lading, scale reports — into the summary reports that operations, management, and regulators rely on. The setting could be railroad operations, mining, port operations, or trucking; the unifying thread is turning raw weight data into useful aggregates.
What's harder than people expect is the data quality work hidden in routine tabulation. Source records have errors, missing entries, mis-coded movements, and disputes; catching these at the compilation stage prevents downstream reporting problems, but it requires the patience to investigate items that don't look right rather than just keying them through. The strongest clerks develop pattern recognition for what kinds of source records most often have errors.
People who tend to thrive here are detail-driven, comfortable with numerical work, and patient with repetitive tasks that reward attention. The role tends to be a foothold into operations clerk, statistical clerk, or transportation analyst positions. The trade-off is that most tonnage compilation has been absorbed by integrated operational systems that auto-aggregate data, and surviving roles concentrate in legacy operations or specialty industries.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Admin & Office roles →Tabulating tonnage data for transportation, shipping, mining, or freight operations — summarizing weights moved, materials handled, or freight tonnage by route, period, or commodity. The work tends to live where operational data meets reporting needs for management and regulators.
Median pay for a Tonnage Compilation Clerk is about $48K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $35K to $73K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, and Active Listening.
Most people in this role hold a high school diploma.
Employment in this field is projected to decline about 3.1% through 2034, with roughly 1.9 million people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Document Processor, Credit Card Clerk, and Chart Clerk.
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