Truck traffic towards Minneapolis spikes in prep for Super Bowl 52

Football players for the Eagles and Patriots have been hard at work this week, preparing their pads, plays, and tactics for Sunday’s Super Bowl LII.

But the big game has also triggered a flood of logistical preparation, as thousands of trucks roll toward Minneapolis, carrying souvenirs to sell to fans, food to serve a hungry audience, equipment to stock the NFL’s traveling interactive theme park--The NFL Experience--and even the television production equipment needed to host a live broadcast.That job demanded an estimated 300 trucks a day for seven days straight to supply Super Bowl host city San Jose, Calif., in 2016, and even more to keep Houston stocked in 2017, according to telematics and fleet management technology vendor Omnitracs LLC.

In 2018, about 2,500 trucks will roll into Minneapolis between the first week of January and the kickoff on Feb. 4, constituting the biggest congregation of 18-wheelers for a special event anywhere in the nation this year, the firm said.

Zooming out from a focus on Minnesota, the game’s impact on transportation flow throughout the country is even bigger, Omnitracs said. Super Bowl Sunday is the second biggest day in American food consumption—following Thanksgiving—and that means truckloads of snacks are already being delivered to grocery stores coast to coast.

Some whopping statistics tell the story. On Super Bowl Sunday, Americans are forecast to: 

• Drink 325 million gallons of beer—5 percent of the country’s total yearly consumption
• Spend $227 million on potato chips
• Buy $330 million worth of pizza
• Eat 8 million pounds of guacamole
• Consume 4 million pounds of pretzels
• Devour 1.3 billion chicken wings.