NAICS 415110Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

New and used automobile and light-duty truck merchant wholesalers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling new and used automobiles and light-duty trucks, sport utility vehicles and mini-vans. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA
556
with employees
Under 10 employeesA
83%
most common size: 1–4
01

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–437367%
5–98716%
10–19417%
20–49275%
50–99143%
100–199102%
200–49941%
500+0—

Of 556 Canadian establishments with employees, 83% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario22340%
Quebec10719%
Alberta10619%
British Columbia8315%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA
Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020
82.8%
1 year
64.3%
3 years
51.2%
5 years
34.4%
10 years
opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

02

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 415, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

Parts distribution is organised by banner programmes. Auto recycling is the fragmented, reachable corner.

Who sets the price
Parts programmes and buying groups.
The software it runs on
Parts cataloguing, inventory and jobber management.
03

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4151 Motor vehicle merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4151
Used-Vehicle WholesalerExecution decides
binding constraint: defensibility

Two businesses share this code. One is the manufacturers' own national sales companies, which import and invoice new vehicles to franchised dealers — not enterable at any scale an entrant could reach. The other is reachable: the independent wholesaler who buys trade-ins and off-lease units and resells them to dealers, with a provincial dealer registration, a floorplan line and a truck. 548 of the 1,289 Canadian establishments employ fewer than five people, and that is who they are. The cut is that the wholesaler's edge was information, and the marketplace now owns it. OPENLANE, the digital wholesale marketplace operating on both sides of the border, sold nearly 1.5 million vehicles in 2025 and took $833.5M in auction and related fees [A] — on the order of $550 a vehicle, collected whoever wins. Dealer-to-dealer volume on its platform grew 15% [A]: dealers are trading with each other directly, with condition reports and price history on screen, which is the gap the travelling wholesaler used to occupy. The marketplace also takes principal positions itself — $410.2M of purchased-vehicle sales [A] — and lends the floorplan: $433.7M of finance revenue [A]. The wholesaler is left bidding in a transparent auction against its own customers, paying the venue on the way in and the way out. The 4153 record screens the recycling yard, a different business on the same branch.

NAICS 41515 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →
04

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Parts cataloguing, inventory and jobber management.

05

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

And the jobs every business has

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 83% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →