For-Hire Trucking Survey

Detailed information for third and fourth quarters 2000

The purpose of this survey is to measure outputs of the Canadian for-hire trucking industry by providing estimates of inter-city commodity movements.

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

The For-hire Trucking Survey has been re-designed and will be replaced by the Trucking Commodity Origin and Destination Survey beginning with reference year 2004.

The purpose of this survey is to measure outputs of the Canadian for-hire trucking industry by providing estimates of inter-city commodity movements. Information is provided for shipments, revenue, weight, and distance. The survey complements the results of the Motor Carriers of Freight Survey by providing additional information. The data are used by federal and provincial governments, trucking associations, members of the industry, universities and research institutions. The statistics are also used by planning boards to determine the amount of traffic on certain highways.

Statistical activity

This statistical activity is part of a set of surveys measuring various aspects of activities related to the movement of people and goods. These surveys are grouped as follows:

Transportation by air includes records related to the movement of aircraft, passengers and cargo by air for both Canadian and foreign air carriers operating in Canada as well as the financial and operating characteristics of Canadian air carriers. These data are produced by the Aviation Statistics Centre.

Transportation by rail includes records relating to rail transportation in Canada, and between the United States and Canada.

Transportation by road includes records relating to all road transport in Canada. In addition to surveying carriers and owners of registered motor vehicles, certain programs rely on aggregation of provincial and territorial administrative records.

Subjects

• Transportation
• Transportation by road

Data sources and methodology

Target population

Canada-based for-hire trucking companies with annual operating revenues of one million dollars or more, the major part of which is derived from long-distance deliveries.

Instrument design

Not applicable.

Sampling

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

The For-hire Trucking Survey is a sample survey and the sample design is based on a two-stage sample of approximately 800,000 shipments made by the inter-city for-hire carriers. Once the population has been stratified according to areas of operation, type of services, commodities carried and revenue class, the first-stage consists of selecting, in each stratum, a number of firms corresponding to the desired number of firms determined at the sample selection stage. The sample of firms is then converted to a sample of Document Storage Location Point (DSLP) by including in the latter sample all DSLP's of the selected firms. The second stage of the sample design consists of selecting a systematic sample of shipments from the files of each selected DSLP. The data collection is made by interviewers from Statistics Canada Regional Operations Offices across Canada. The interviewers visit each selected DSLP, determine the apparent size of the files (number of shipments) and, using the appropriate sampling interval from a table, transcribe the data from the shipping documents.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

The following information is collected for each sampled shipment: the origin and destination of the shipment, a description of the commodity or commodities carried, the shipment weight and the transportation revenue earned. This information about shipments is either transcribed from documents, or obtained from computer tapes provided by some respondents. Once all necessary information for the survey is collected, a series of verifications takes place to ensure that the records are consistent and that collection and capture of the data did not introduce errors. Missing values and data found in error are imputed. A complete description of the procedures applied to the survey data is available upon request from the Transportation Division.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s).