PMTC urges Canadian Government to reconsider survey

The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada hopes to reopen discussions with Statistics Canada and other government departments about restructuring an annual private carrier survey.

Statistics Canada’s Transportation Division recently announced it will cease conducting the annual survey, which has been conducted since 1990, because the response rate was consistently low and finding private carriers grew increasingly difficult. The survey only includes carriers with annual operating expenses of over $1 million.

PMTC has been advising Stats Canada for many years that the minimum operating expense criteria has excluded most of the carriers since the majority of fleets operate with less than 10 vehicles.

PMTC said it has been unsuccessful in changing Stats Canada’s procedure to date, but hopes the government will restructure the survey if it allows PMTC to provide a large database of private fleets to a new survey redesigned specifically to the whole private fleet community.