Every morning, every day, British Columbians in all parts of the province get up, dress and eat breakfast. Their meal might be cereal or a muffin or just a coffee on the run. On school days, some organize children and hand them backpacks and textbooks as they go out the door. Some read the newspaper. Some feed their pets or their livestock. Commuters stop to fill up their gas tanks and transit buses ferry others into and around our cities and towns. Our communities wake up, our homes and schools and businesses and government offices turn on the lights, and our lives – and the economy – begin to hum.
Most of us don’t have to think for a minute about one unifying aspect of our lives: almost every single product we touch or use from the minute we get up, from the newspaper to our child’s backpack to the gas in our vehicles, was brought to us by truck.
About 23,000 registered trucking companies in B.C. move the essential ingredients of our lives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In 2005, trucks transported 66.7 million shipments, carrying 6.15 billion tons of cargo. 1
If that sounds like big business, it is. But it’s also a business in which every one of us is involved. Statistics Canada coined a phrase to show the trucking industry’s incredible reach: If you got it, a truck brought it. 2
Statistics show that the trucking industry is a major contributor in its own right to the economy of B.C. It’s also the means by which so many different aspects of the day-to-day lives of British Columbians are made functional, comfortable, healthy and safe.
A Look at the Numbers: Trucking in B.C.
No other transportation mode can match trucking’s flexible, time-sensitive, door-to-door service. 3 As a result, trucking plays an important role in the economy, both as a business in its own right and as a business that serves others.
According to Statistics Canada, truck transportation was a $1.67 billion industry in B.C. in 2006 4 (and that amount does not include private trucks transporting goods for such companies as Neptune Food Services or Canadian Tire, which is likely roughly equivalent 5). Not only does it earn big bucks, it’s a growth industry: between 1997 and 2006, it grew by 42.2 percent, at an average rate of about 4 percent per year. The growth rate of all other B.C. industries combined was less than 3 percent.
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Figure 1: Source: Statistics Canada 6 |
Truck transportation represents 1.23 percent of B.C.’s gross domestic product (GDP), which seems unimpressive until you compare other industries. As shown in Figure 2, below, trucking’s share of B.C.’s GDP is higher than that of coal and metal ore mining, agriculture (crop and animal production), and the pulp and paper industry.
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Figure 2: Source: Statistics Canada 7 |
Outside of service industries like health care, education and public administration, only forestry and logging and oil and gas extraction outstrip trucking in their contribution to B.C.’s GDP.
Interestingly though, almost every one of the industries in Figure 2 relies on trucking for some aspect of its existence. Just as we all do.
A Look at the Story: Trucking in Our Lives
Most of us who travel B.C.’s roads know that they carry large numbers of trucks of all sizes, on the highways and through our communities. What we may not consider is that those trucks are carrying something that will end up in our homes or offices or at local hospitals or banks through an efficient supply chain that transfers goods from manufacturers, distributors, farmers, importers and other suppliers to outlets that we deal with every day. We can get by without some of the goods that trucks bring, but few of us can get by without all of them.
While we’re just getting up, trucks may already have delivered what we need to the locations many of us will visit that day, or they may be transferring other loads in ways that also contribute to our comfort. Here are some examples:
Dinner anyone? Grocery chains and smaller food stores depend on frequent deliveries of both fresh and packaged foods to fill their shelves. Trucks bring in vegetables, fruit, eggs and dairy products from local producers. They bring in fresh meat and poultry and fish from nearby sources and frozen supplies from overseas via B.C.’s ports. Restaurants and fast food outlets receive their orders from local suppliers and distributors. Even if we’re eating home-baked muffins, a truck brought in the flour and oil and other ingredients that they contain.
Fill ‘er up? Unless you work at home or are lucky enough to walk or cycle to your destination, trucks help get you where you need to go. They deliver gasoline and diesel to service stations for passenger vehicles and to bus, air, rail and marine terminals throughout the province. Because a truck got there, you’ll get where you need to go too.
Feeling a little under the weather? If you or someone you love is due for a hospital stay or cared for in a nursing home, you have trucks to thank in part for their clean, safe, well-stocked surroundings. Many hospitals now contract out meal preparation and have meals delivered on a daily basis. Trucks also deliver clean, sterile sheets and gowns and pick up soiled articles for treatment. Both garbage and chemical and medical waste are picked up and taken offsite, helping to keep the environment free from contamination. Medications, supplies, radiopharmaceuticals and oxygen all come in by truck.
Whose turn is it to take out the garbage? Trucks whisk domestic garbage and recycling away from curbsides or drop-off depots each week. Some communities also arrange for yard waste removal. And, trucks move potentially toxic biomedical and hazardous wastes – batteries, oil, asbestos and solvents – to facilities where they can be properly treated and disposed of. In a very practical way, the livability of our communities and homes is enhanced because trucks are on the job.
Is your debit card worn out? Although more and more British Columbians rely on debit and credit cards to make purchases and our accounts are kept on computers, we still need the bank notes and coins that are delivered to banks by armoured security trucks. In particular, people on low incomes, who may have neither bank accounts nor credit cards, benefit from access to cash.
These are just a few ways in which trucks help to make our lives easier and more straightforward. Trucks carry other goods that we need, from clothing and lumber to computers and vehicles, to distributors and retailers everywhere. Even if goods come into B.C. via air, rail or sea ports, trucks are still the means by which they reach the stores and, finally, consumers like you.
B.C.’s Economy Depends in so Many Ways on Trucks
Few of us ever think about the ways in which truck transportation helps support both B.C.’s economy and our well-being. And we shouldn’t have to. Trucks quietly, consistently and efficiently keep things moving, because that’s what the industry is about. But we should all occasionally remember just how important that industry is to B.C. and our communities – to our daily lives. If you got it, a truck brought it. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
1 Statistics Canada (2007). Trucking Commodity and Destination Survey. The Daily, October 10, 2007.
2 Statistics Canada (2005). Trucking in Canada 2005 (Report No. 53-222-XIB). Ottawa: Statistics Canada: Transportation Division; Surface and Marine Transportation.
3 Statistics Canada (2007). Trucking Commodity and Destination Survey. The Daily, October 10, 2007.
4 According to NAICS 2002, Truck Transportation (484) is defined as General Freight Trucking (4841) and Specialized Freight Trucking (4842). Both of these major sub-categories include additional categories such as, among others, local and long-distance trucking, truck load, and less than truck load.
5 Statistics Canada does not include private trucks in its data on truck transportation; however, they estimate that its value is roughly equivalent to the contribution of for-hire trucking. In the last year that data was available for private carriers (1995), private trucking contributed $19 billion to Canada’s GDP (about 2 percent), while for-hire trucking contributed approximately $18 billion. Equivalents would be similar for B.C.’s GDP. Please see Industry Canada’s webpage on the Economic Relevance of Private Trucking: http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ts-sdc.nsf/en/fd01105e.html
6 All figures in this section are based on Statistics Canada’s Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA). The data were obtained using the CANSIM service and include the following data series: 3790017 and 3790025. Figure 1 is based on 1997 chained dollars, at basic prices by industry. Note that there are other ways of expressing GDP, such as income or expenditure based, at factor prices or market prices and at constant dollars or current dollars, yielding significantly different values from those shown here. As such, caution is advised when comparing the data herein with other published data sources. Chained dollars are a measure used to express real prices. Real prices are prices that have been adjusted to remove the effect of changes in the purchasing power of the dollar (inflation). They usually reflect buying power relative to a reference year. Traditionally, real prices have been expressed in constant dollars, a measure based on the weights of goods and services in a single year, usually a recent year. A more recent measure is based on the average weights of goods and services in successive pairs of years. It is "chained" because the second year in each pair, with its weights, becomes the first year of the next pair. The advantage of using the chained-dollar measure is that it is more closely related to any given period covered and is therefore subject to less distortion over time.
7 Health care and social services do not include hospitals. Educational services do not include universities. Both hospitals and universities are treated as separate line items within the system of national accounts.