Dave Bergman looks out the window of his truck at the traffic in Los Angeles. “We’re pulling freight and our freight is the future,” he says.

At 30, Bergman is a young freight forwarder, one of many fueling the freight-shipping revolution. Unlike package delivery, freight has never been an industry in the spotlight. Over the past decade, as commerce in America shifted to online sales, freight deliveries have slipped behind.It’s a quiet change. The Federal Reserve’s quarterly Survey of Consumer Finances shows that freight transport had been the fifth-biggest source of household expenditures since the 1980s, outranking home purchases.But with online shopping increasing steadily and railroads expanding their services, freight services are now a $300 billion industry.