By the Numbers: TC study updates trucking landscape

OTTAWA — Heavy trucks accounted for 21.5 billion vehicle kilometers in 2005 and 13 percent of those were empty hauls — compared to six billion kilometers for medium-sized trucks, according to a new Transport Canada study released this week.

Alberta houses about a quarter of
the national trucking fleet.

In its annual report, Transportation in Canada 2006, Transport Canada also found, not too surprisingly, that Canadian for-hire trucking firms carried over 80 per cent of total tonnage shipped intraprovincially.

Trucking also accounted for 61 percent of trade with the United States, while rail managed 17 percent, pipeline 13 per cent, air five percent and marine four percent.

However, heavy truck activity across the Canada-U.S. border fell about one percent in 2006 to 12.9 million two-way trips.

The Ontario Trucking Association has complied a list of some more trucking-specific highlights. Among them:

— Truck carriers with annual revenues of $12 million or more accounted for 55.2 percent of the trucking revenues generated by trucking firms with at least $1 million of annual revenues.

Five commodity groups represent between 80
and 87 percent of all exports and imports.

— According to the Canadian Vehicle Survey, there were 615,000 commercial trucks (gross weight of at least 4,500 kilograms) in Canada, of which 321,000 were medium-sized, weighing between 4,500 and 15,000 kilograms. A total of 294,000 were Class 8 (heavy) trucks. Ontario (37%), Alberta (25 %) and Quebec (13.5 %) accounted for over 75 percent of the nation’s heavy truck fleet.

— In domestic activities, construction materials are the top commodities moved by trucks intraprovincially, followed by agricultural products, primary metals, metal and mineral products, and energy products.

— Five commodity groups represented almost 80 percent of total exports in 2005: automobiles and transport equipment, machinery and electrical equipment, other manufacturing products, plastics and chemical products, and base metals/articles of base metal. The same five commodity groups represented 87 percent of imports.

— Heavy truck fuel efficiency averaged about 33 L per 100 km, with straight trucks averaging 31 liters, and tractor-trailers averaging 35 liters.

— The trucking industry as a whole employed 356,124 people in 2005. Of these there were 109,284 drivers employed by the for-hire trucking industry, 78,500 owner-operators, and, according to 2001 census data, 102,509 self-declared delivery drivers.