NAICS 4162Industry group · 4-digitregional market1 market record

Metal service centres

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling metals and metal products. These establishments may also cut, bend or otherwise prepare metals to customer specification. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,107
Under 10 employeesA: 54%

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

1–436133%

5–923321%

10–1922020%

20–4919818%

50–99737%

100–199172%

200–49950%

500+0—

Of 1,107 Canadian establishments with employees, 54% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario43639%

Quebec19518%

British Columbia18917%

Alberta18817%

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.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 416, 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.

regional competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 416 Building material and supplies merchant wholesalers

A yard, a fleet and contractor credit. Buying groups let independents survive, and delivered service is what they sell against the big boxes.

Who sets the price: Commodity lumber and panel prices, plus service to contractors.
The software it runs on: Building-materials dealer ERP with delivery, contractor accounts and estimating.

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.

Operating businessScreened

Metal Service CentreStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

A service centre buys steel, aluminium and stainless by the truckload from mills, holds it, and sells it cut, slit, sawn or burned to fabricators who need two tonnes on Thursday. The processing is what earns the margin, and the margin is respectable. The cut is the metal on the floor. Russel Metals, a Canadian-listed distributor that calls itself one of the largest in North America, closed 2025 with C$1,084M of inventory and C$554M of receivables against C$4,642M of revenue [A] — more than a third of a year's sales tied up in stock and customer credit before a saw is switched on — and earned C$244M of EBIT, about 5.2% of revenue, in a year of record tonnage [A]. The inventory is also a commodity position the operator did not choose: the mill sets the replacement price, so a falling market marks down steel already paid for, and margins 'came down' and 'stabilized' within a single quarter of Russel's 2025 commentary. Capacity trades accordingly. Russel bought seven US service centres from Kloeckner for about US$95M, expecting roughly US$500M of annual revenue [A] — under twenty cents on the revenue dollar, which is what buildings, cranes and processing lines are worth without the working capital that has to be poured back into them. The 416 record makes the capital argument for the building-materials yard; here it is larger, and the stock reprices weekly.

NAICS 41626 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 416 Building material and supplies merchant wholesalers

Building Materials Distribution YardStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

A yard is inventory, forklifts, delivery trucks and credit extended to contractors who pay when the draw clears — working capital in three directions at once, against a demand line that tracks housing starts. The buying groups give independents some purchasing parity, and the national dealers beat it anyway. The dealer ERP serving this industry is screened separately at 444.

NAICS 4166 vendors named8 sourced figuresOpen →

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: Building-materials dealer ERP with delivery, contractor accounts and estimating.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 6

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Russel MetalsRUSMF	Metal service centres4162	$4.6B	1/6
Kloeckner MetalsPrivate	Metal service centres4162	—	2/6
Metal SupermarketsPrivate	Metal service centres4162	—	3/6
ReliancePrivate	Metal service centres4162	—	4/6
RyersonPrivate	Metal service centres4162	—	5/6
SamuelPrivate	Metal service centres4162	—	6/6

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.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 4162, and 2 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
41621	Metal service centres	1,107	screened at 4162

Alongside it, under 416 Building material and supplies merchant wholesalers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
4161	Electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers	3,856	Electrical & Plumbing Trade Supply Branch
4163	Lumber, millwork, hardware and other building supplies merchant wholesalers	4,771	Two-Step Building Products Distributor