Fuel dealers — NAICS 45721 industry report

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

1–428643%

5–914522%

10–1912218%

20–499014%

50–99132%

100–19930%

200–49910%

500+0—

Of 660 Canadian establishments with employees, 65% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario18228%

Quebec12619%

Nova Scotia7511%

British Columbia7411%

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

Retail Trade, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

72.3%

3 years

59.8%

5 years

44.2%

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 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.

local competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 457 Gasoline stations and fuel vendors

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.

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 4572 Fuel dealers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4572

Propane & Heating Fuel RouteStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

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.

NAICS 45725 vendors named9 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: Forecourt controllers, fuel pricing and convenience point of sale.

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.

05

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.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail sales supervisors One industry 84.7%

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 80.1%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 80%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 69.7%

Pharmacists and dietitians Mostly one sector 61%

Medical technologists and technicians One industry 23.6%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 18.7%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 15.7%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 12.2%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 11.2%

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

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 8.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.7%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 6.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.7%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5.4%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 5.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 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 →

06

Inside this industry

3 rows sit directly beneath 45721. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
457211	Heating oil dealers	201	screened at 4572
457212	Liquefied petroleum gas (bottled gas) dealers	322	screened at 4572
457219	Other fuel dealers	137	screened at 4572