Best States for Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers: California Leads Overall, Delaware Tops Pay

Across states, the data show that high salaries, large employment counts, and strong LaborCove Geography Scores do not always align, giving transportation, storage, and distribution managers several distinct types of markets to compare against the national benchmarks.

At the national level, transportation, storage, and distribution managers have a median annual salary of $107,230 and total employment of 221,180. National projected employment growth for this occupation is 6.1%. This projection applies to the occupation nationally and is not a state or metro growth figure. These benchmarks provide context for comparing the salaries, employment counts, and LaborCove Geography Scores of the top‑ranked states.

California holds the #1 spot in LaborCove’s rankings with a Geography Score of 74.94. Texas follows at #2 with a Geography Score of 56.51. New Jersey ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 55.52, slightly below Texas on this metric. New York is ranked #4 at 52.39, while Washington rounds out the top five with a Geography Score of 52.12. Colorado (#6, 49.54), Delaware (#7, 49.25), Massachusetts (#8, 48.06), Illinois (#9, 47.84), and Georgia (#10, 46.06) show that the top 10 spans a Geography Score range from the mid‑70s down into the mid‑40s.

Several top‑ranked states have median salaries above the national median of $107,230. For example, California’s median salary of $123,780 is above the national figure, as are those for Texas ($100,700 is below the national median, so this sentence is removed in editing; we instead state values without a higher/lower comparison), New Jersey ($130,610), New York ($127,180), Washington ($136,500), Colorado ($132,610), Delaware ($145,000), Massachusetts ($123,830), Illinois ($120,250), and Georgia ($123,330). Within the top five, Washington’s median salary of $136,500 is higher than California’s $123,780, New Jersey’s $130,610, and New York’s $127,180. Among all 10 listed states, Delaware’s median salary of $145,000 is higher than each of the other nine states in the table. Despite these salary levels, Washington and Delaware rank #5 and #7 in the Geography Score rankings, respectively, while California ranks #1 and New Jersey ranks #3. This demonstrates that the highest salaries do not automatically align with the highest LaborCove Geography Scores in these results.

California has an employment count of 30,540 transportation, storage, and distribution managers, which is the largest employment market value supplied in this dataset. Texas has the second‑largest employment count among the listed states at 28,710. New Jersey (9,120) and Illinois (11,030) have employment counts above 9,000 but well below those of California and Texas. New York (6,740) and Georgia (6,700) are close to each other in employment count and fall between the mid‑range and higher‑range values among the top 10. Washington (2,490), Colorado (2,310), Massachusetts (4,310), and Delaware (310) have smaller employment counts than California and Texas. Delaware’s employment count of 310 is the lowest among the 10 states listed, while still earning a #7 Geography Score ranking in this set.

California combines the highest LaborCove Geography Score in this group (74.94) with the highest employment count (30,540) among the top 10 states. Its median salary of $123,780 is below Delaware’s $145,000 and Washington’s $136,500 but above the national median of $107,230. Texas ranks #2 with a Geography Score of 56.51 and an employment count of 28,710, which is slightly below California’s employment level. Texas has a median salary of $100,700, which is below California’s $123,780. Delaware illustrates that a state can appear in the top 10 with a small employment count and a high salary. It ranks #7 with a Geography Score of 49.25, has the smallest employment count in this group at 310, and offers the highest median salary among the listed states at $145,000.

LaborCove builds these rankings from authoritative U.S. labor‑market data combined with its own Geography Score methodology. For this article, national employment, national median annual salary, and national projected employment growth for transportation, storage, and distribution managers come from Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations for May 2025. The 6.1% projected employment growth reflects a national‑level occupational projection, not a state or metro forecast. State results use the supplied median annual salary, employment counts, and LaborCove Geography Scores for each geography. Geography Scores and ranks summarize how each state performs in LaborCove’s model but do not guarantee individual outcomes. Readers should interpret these rankings alongside their own priorities, since the best state for one transportation, storage, and distribution manager may not be best for another.