NAICS 4832Industry group · 4-digitinternational market1 market record

Inland water transportation

SoftwareMaritime & Port Operations Software 483

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in the inland water transportation of freight and passengers. Transportation within harbours is included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 103
Under 10 employeesA: 63%
Establishments · USA: 685
Employment · USA: 19,456
Payroll · USA: $1.7B

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

1–44140%

5–92423%

10–191918%

20–491111%

50–9944%

100–19933%

200–49911%

500+0—

Of 103 Canadian establishments with employees, 63% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

British Columbia5553%

Quebec2019%

Ontario1414%

Newfoundland and Labrador55%

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

Transportation and Warehousing, US · opened 2020

84.1%

1 year

67.4%

3 years

52.7%

5 years

36.1%

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.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 483, 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.

international competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 483 Water transportation

Vessel capital and cabotage rules. Coastal, ferry and tug-and-barge operations are regional and occasionally reachable.

Who sets the price: Global freight rates; regulated tariffs on ferries.
The software it runs on: Vessel operations, port and terminal systems.

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

River & Harbour Vessel OperatorStructure decides

binding constraint: market size

Inland water transport is a real industry where there is a river system to carry it. Kirby, the largest US inland tank-barge operator, ran 1,105 barges in 2025 and earned $374.5M of operating income on $1,935M of marine revenue, a 19.3% margin [A] — four-fifths of it on the Mississippi and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a year-round network with petrochemical plants on its banks. Canada has no such network. The St. Lawrence–Great Lakes system is classified with coastal shipping, not here. What remains is 103 establishments, 55 of them in British Columbia and 65 with fewer than ten employees [A]: Fraser River towing and log work, harbour ferries and water taxis, lake and river tour boats, seasonal northern resupply. The one inland freight system of any length, the Mackenzie, makes the point. Its long-time commercial operator, Northern Transportation Company, failed, and in December 2016 the Government of the Northwest Territories bought the assets for C$7.5M [A] explicitly to keep fuel moving to communities with no other option. A lifeline route that the private market could not sustain and the state now runs is not an opening. The harbour and river niches are startable with one vessel and a Transport Canada certificate, and some are decent livelihoods — but each is a single waterway with a short season and a fixed number of customers, and none was found that scales past its own shoreline. Maritime software is screened separately.

NAICS 48325 vendors named11 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.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 483 Water transportation

Maritime & Port Operations SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent Kaleris (Navis) and Veson Nautical

A terminal operating system runs cranes and yard equipment in real time and a failure stops the port, so nobody buys one from a new vendor — the reference requirement is absolute. The chartering and voyage side is a closed data business where Veson's value is the contract and fixture history it has accumulated rather than the software around it. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4837 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

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 · 3

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
Ocean by CognisantMDPrivate	Inland water transportation4832	—	1/3
KirbyNYSE:KEX	Inland water transportation4832	—	2/3
Marine Transportation ServicesPrivate	Inland water transportation4832	—	3/3

Who works here

The occupations employed in Transportation and warehousing, 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

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations

Concentrated in this sectorA

Mail and message distribution occupations One industry 90.8%

Train crew operating occupations One industry 90.7%

Transportation officers and controllers One industry 75.7%

Transport truck and transit drivers Mostly one sector 65.4%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 63.9%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 57.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and heavy equipment and transport operators Mostly one sector 22.6%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 11.4%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 9.1%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 6.6%

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 13.9%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 5.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 3.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 3.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 3.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.7%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.7%

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 4832, and 3 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
48321	Inland water transportation	103	screened at 4832

Alongside it, under 483 Water transportation

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
4831	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation	192	Coastal & Great Lakes Shipping