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Annual Motor Carriers of Freight Survey of Small For-hire Carriers and Owner Operators: Financial and Operating Statistics, 2006

Introduction

The Annual Motor Carriers of Freight Survey (AMCFS) provides information on the structure and performance of two distinct groups of carriers located in Canada: small for-hire carriers and owner operators.

Small for-hire carriers are carriers with annual operating revenue between $30,000 and $1 million. Combined with AMCFS data on medium and large carriers with revenue of $1 million or more, this information helps to provide a more complete picture of the for-hire trucking industry.

Owner operators are independent operators who provide transport services under contract to for-hire carriers, private carriers, or both. 1  While most owner operators are small businesses, the data in this publication cover all those that generated revenue of $30,000 or more in 2006. Thus, the estimates will likely include some owner operators who generated revenue of $1 million or more in 2006.

The financial estimates for the survey (revenue and expense data) are based on administrative files from the Tax Estimates Program. The other types of data (on activities, territory served, employment, equipment, fuel and distance) are collected through computer-assisted telephone interviews.

The publication is in three parts: section 1 contains results for small for-hire carriers, section 2 for owner operators, and section 3 contains a general review of the quality of data used in the survey.

Data limitations

Users are advised that financial data used in this article were taken from administrative records (tax files), which were not collected for statistical purposes. The financial data are compiled by Statistics Canada from a sample of Canada Revenue Agency T1 records of unincorporated firms' tax files and T2 records of incorporated firms' tax files.

Furthermore, operating ratios are not presented because they could be misinterpreted. Unincorporated businesses do not report labour costs in the same manner as incorporated ones on their tax returns. This is because working owners obtain their remuneration from profits, and they do not appear as expenses in the same way as salaries and wages do for incorporated companies. Also, fuel costs may have been reported under more than one expense category or may not be obtainable from the source of tax data. The result is an underestimation of total expenses, which would distort any calculated operating ratio.