It's also interesting to see how busy the waterways in / around the North Sea / European west coast are compared to the US. But then, the US is a large landmass and probably has a lot more ground transport (e.g. trains)

IIRC, most stuff gets around the US on 18-wheelers using highways. (Train infrastructure in the US is laughably terrible.)

That's not the case, freight trains in the USA are excellent.

European railways prioritise passengers, but much freight moves by water.

It really depends on what you're transporting.

If you want to move 100 tank cars of crude oil, or 100 cars of coal, then a freight train will accomplish that pretty easily. You can even move a truck trailer via rail, that's called intermodal.

But if you want to deliver 50,000 pounds of freight across the country in three days, you can't do it by rail. You pay a tractor trailer "team" (e.g. often a husband and wife)* to pick up your load on the West Coast on Thursday and deliver it on the East Coast on Monday. They'll take turns driving all weekend to accomplish that.

Bulk stuff moves by train or barge, relatively heavy relatively time sensitive stuff moves by truck, light and time sensitive stuff moves by air.

*Edit: that sounds complicated or risky, but it's not. Manufacturers use logistics companies to handle these details. Logistics companies are also good at quickly moving LTL (less-than-truckload) loads across long distances by consolidating multiple shipments into one trailer.

Most stuff does indeed get around the US by truck:

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

I've also heard our freight rail infrastructure described as excellent through, so maybe if you compared it to other countries in cost per ton/mile it would come out well.

Those waterways fill the same sort of role that barges on the Mississippi fill in the US.