Trucking Statistics Program (TSP)

Detailed information for 2025

The purpose of the Trucking Statistics Program (TSP) is to measure, quantify and qualify the movements of goods by the trucking industry in Canada, to allow comparisons to other freight transportation modes (air, marine and rail), and therefore analyze its impact on the Canadian economy.

• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

The TSP is about the collection of bills of lading information (waybills) from freight trucking businesses. The information collected will provide a more detailed picture of the industry, which in turn will:

1) position Canada's government more effectively in the current context of trade negotiations with the United States
2) ensure informed decisions related to reducing barriers to interprovincial/interterritorial trade and
3) improve preparation for future supply chain logistical matters (such as its disruptions).

Overall, the information collected will address data gaps in Canada's trucking industry and support evidence-based transportation policy development.

Reference period: Calendar year

Subjects

• Transportation
• Transportation by road

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The TSP extracts its frame from Statistics Canada's Business Register (BR). The BR statistical structure of a business contains from top to bottom four levels of statistical entities: enterprise, company, establishment and location. The survey population consists of all enterprises on the BR with at least one trucking establishment (NAICS: 484XXX) that has at least $2 million in annual revenue.

Instrument design

TSP collects data using electronic data reporting. During the initial call, the respondent will be informed that they will receive an email from Statistics Canada containing instructions on how to access a dedicated Electronic File Transfer (EFT) vault. Once they access their EFT vault, they will be asked to upload their electronic files of shipments data for the reporting period.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

A stratified random sample was created, made up of enterprises grouped by province and classified to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Canada 2022.

Units deemed very important were hand selected to be "must-take" units for this sample. Then, to complete the stratification, seven geographic groups (some provinces and territories were grouped together) and six industry groups combining NAICS codes contained in 484 were created. Based on the annual revenue of the enterprises, small, medium, and large strata were established for each domain (seven geographic groups by six industry groups).

Following the stratification, a sample, of a predetermined size, was allocated into each stratum, with the objective of optimizing the overall quality of the survey while respecting the available resources. The total sample size for this survey is approximately 1,900 enterprises.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: Pre-contact data collection: 2026-07-02 to 2026-07-29; Main survey data collection: 2026-09-01 to 2026-12-31

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

TSP uses Electronic File Transfer (EFT): All companies send their data electronically.