Gasoline stations and fuel vendors
This subsector comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing motor fuels, whether or not the gasoline station is operated in conjunction with a convenience store, repair garage, restaurant or other type of operation. Establishments that operate gasoline stations on behalf of their owners and receive a commission on the sale of fuels are also included. It also comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing heating oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and other fuels via direct selling. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 10,026
- Under 10 employeesA
- 61%
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
Of 10,026 Canadian establishments with employees, 61% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
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.
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 457, 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.
Fuel draws the traffic and the convenience store earns the profit. Environmental liability travels with the site, and volumes face a long decline.
- Who sets the price
- Rack price and the station across the road; fuel margin is cents a litre.
- The software it runs on
- Forecourt controllers, fuel pricing and convenience point of sale.
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.
Fuel is the loss leader, the store is the margin, and scale decides both. Couche-Tard runs close to 17,300 stores on more than $76B of fiscal 2026 revenue and opened 130 in the year — a buying power in fuel supply, private label and card processing that a single site cannot approach. The consolidation is also removing the independents' comparables: Sunoco completed its acquisition of Parkland and its roughly 4,000 locations on 31 October 2025. Add environmental liability on underground tanks, which is the specific risk that makes a cheap site expensive. The forecourt software at this code is screened separately.
The customer captivity everyone admires in this business is bought, not earned: it is a tank. A propane dealer owns the tank in the customer's yard, which is why churn is low — and which is why entry means buying a tank fleet, a bulk plant and bobtail trucks before the first delivery. Suburban Propane, a scale operator, turned approximately $1.43B of fiscal 2025 revenue on about 1 million customers through roughly 750 locations across 42 states, selling 400.5 million retail gallons, up 5.9% [A]; Ferrellgas sold 566.9 million retail gallons through about 700 outlets [A]. That implies roughly $1,430 of revenue per customer per year — a good number, against an asset base that must exist before any of it arrives. The honest entry here is acquiring an existing route, not building one, and that makes it a search-and-finance problem rather than a market-entry one. Screened on that basis.
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.
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 · 8
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alimentation Couche-TardPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | $76.0B | 1/7 |
| Bulloch TechnologiesPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 2/7 |
| Federated Co-opPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 3/7 |
| FerrellgasNYSE:FGP | Fuel dealers4572 | — | 1/1 |
| Gilbarco Veeder-RootPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 4/7 |
| InvencoPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 5/7 |
| PDI TechnologiesPrivate | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 6/7 |
| VerifoneDelisted | Gasoline stations4571 | — | 7/7 |
Who works here
The occupations employed in Retail trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Tagged to this industry
Concentrated in this sectorA
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
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.
Inside this industry
2 rows sit directly beneath 457, and 10 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4571 | Gasoline stations | 9,366 | Fuel Retail & Forecourt SystemsGas Station & Convenience Site Acquisition |
| 4572 | Fuel dealers | 660 | Propane & Heating Fuel Route |