How to Use tonnage in a Sentence

tonnage

noun
  • If tonnages are down in a bad year like this one, more acres have to be cut.
    — Edward Lotterman, Twin Cities, 23 June 2019
  • The new fee charges are based on the net tonnage of a vessel.
    — Yeo Boon Ping, CNBC, 21 Apr. 2025
  • And there is also tonnage that needs to be returned.
    — Glenn Taylor, Sourcing Journal, 5 Feb. 2026
  • There are modern ocean freighters that can carry that tonnage in a single trip.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • The tonnage that chicory provides allows a small plot to feed more deer than a pure clover plot of the same size.
    — Will Brantley, Field & Stream, 18 June 2020
  • The sheer volume of whiskey that comes out of these operations needs the tonnage to match.
    — Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 30 June 2024
  • To carry all that tonnage, the dinosaur walked on all fours with thick, muscular legs.
    — René A. Guzman, San Antonio Express-News, 30 Mar. 2021
  • That’s a lot of tonnage, but requires perspective.
    — Bob Woods, CNBC, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Putin has ordered that the tonnage be quadrupled to 80 million tons in just five years.
    — National Geographic, 22 Mar. 2019
  • About 60 percent of the deadweight tonnage moved to front lines is gasoline and oil.
    — Popular Mechanics, 6 June 2019
  • This food amounted to over 13 percent of total lend-lease tonnage.
    — Carlisle Ford Runge, Foreign Affairs, 24 June 2022
  • Total tonnage at the port was up 5 percent for the same period.
    — Andrea Leinfelder, Houston Chronicle, 25 Oct. 2019
  • The chart is measuring volume by tonnage.
    — Ken Roberts, Forbes.com, 17 Jan. 2026
  • Brokers expect up to 20% less ship steel in terms of tonnage to be recycled this year.
    — Costas Paris, WSJ, 12 Apr. 2019
  • And a clause in the contract required the city deliver a certain tonnage of waste or pay a penalty.
    — Sarah Bowman, The Indianapolis Star, 28 May 2020
  • Over the past five years the average annual tonnage has dropped to less than 7 million tons.
    — jsonline.com, 2 Sep. 2021
  • The decrease comes as tonnage has been relatively stable over the past couple of years.
    — Arkansas Online, 30 Dec. 2025
  • New Orleans’ port, seventh largest in the US by tonnage, has to close for storms of this size.
    — Adam Rogers, WIRED, 12 July 2019
  • Some of this is fun, and the sheer tonnage of such sequences makes the third episode much livelier than its predecessors.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 20 Sep. 2023
  • If sheer tonnage of voter case studies and white papers could rescue a party, Democrats would be set for years.
    — Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Since the Key Bridge was built 48 years ago, cargo ships have more than quadrupled in tonnage, experts say.
    — Hayes Gardner, Hartford Courant, 25 Apr. 2024
  • There’s another reason why the tonnage of AI wildlife videos has increased so quickly.
    — Frederick Dreier, Outside, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Viking Libra is classified as a small ship with a gross tonnage of 54,300 tons.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 20 Mar. 2026
  • Mere numbers cannot capture the tonnage of attention dumped on Radcliffe from all sides over the last 20 years.
    — Peter Rubin, Longreads, 26 Oct. 2022
  • Gaines said, given that the port touts itself as the fourth-largest in the United States by tonnage and the top exporter of crude oil.
    — Washington Post, 21 Oct. 2017
  • Through August of this year, the percentage is down to 38% by value and 62% by tonnage.
    — Ken Roberts, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2022
  • But our tonnage, our revenues, our inputs, outputs, are pretty consistent as a total number.
    — Arkansas Online, 30 Dec. 2025
  • Considered the world's busiest lock system by tonnage, the Soo Locks are vital for transporting iron ore.
    — Caitlin Looby, jsonline.com, 25 Mar. 2026
  • Around half of the global container fleet and 90% of the world’s largest ships by tonnage crossed the Taiwan Strait last year.
    — Joyu Wang, WSJ, 6 Aug. 2022
  • But seasonal factors might not be entirely behind the tonnage decrease.
    — Arkansas Online, 18 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tonnage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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