Specialized freight (except used goods) trucking, long distance
This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing long distance trucking services using specialized equipment. Long distance trucking establishments provide trucking services between metropolitan areas. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 5,621
- Under 10 employeesA
- 85%
- Establishments · USA
- 11,976
- Employment · USA
- 173,625
- Payroll · USA
- $11.0B
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 5,621 Canadian establishments with employees, 85% have fewer than ten — an industry of very 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.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 484, 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.
The most fragmented large industry in the country: a truck and an authority is an entry. Rates are cyclical, insurance is the rising cost, and specialised freight prices far better than dry van.
- Who sets the price
- The spot market and brokers for small carriers; contract rates for large.
- The software it runs on
- Transportation management, dispatch, electronic logging and fuel-tax compliance.
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 4842 Specialized freight trucking covers it.
The trailer is the business, and it is priced. Flatbed, temperature-controlled and oversize freight pay better than dry van because the equipment and the permits are harder, which is also why entry costs more. TFI bought Daseke for $1.1B including debt in a deal covering 4,900 tractors and 11,000 flatbed and specialised trailers [B] — about $224,000 of enterprise value per truck [derived], which is the number a would-be fleet is bidding against. On the temperature-controlled side Marten turned $883.7M of 2025 operating revenue, down from $963.7M, with net income down by a third [A], and about 59% of truckload and dedicated revenue from temperature-sensitive freight [B]. The acquirer's own numbers say what the trailer is now earning: TFI's Truckload segment took US$2,733.4M before fuel surcharge in 2025 and US$220.1M of operating income — 8.1% of revenue, down from 9.9% [A]. Both are asset businesses with cyclical rates, and the cycle is going the wrong way. The single-truck version of this is genuinely enterable and is screened separately at 484121 — this record is about the fleet, and the fleet is bought rather than built.
Moving software is a crowded, cheap category with two venture-funded leaders and no owner. SmartMoving (Dallas) took a $41.5M growth investment from Mainsail Partners on 23 August 2022 [B, Mainsail release]. It calls itself the all-in-one moving CRM "used by thousands of moving companies" [C]. Supermove (San Francisco) raised an $18M Series A led by a16z with Founders Fund on 26 January 2022 [B, company announcement] and now sells itself as an "AI-enabled operating system" with AI voice agents that answer every call [C]. Behind them is a long list of bootstrapped vendors that each claim hundreds or thousands of movers. MoveitPro claims 1,500+ moving companies and 3.5M+ moves [C]. Elromco's MoveBoard (Canton, Massachusetts, since 2015) claims 600+ across the US and Canada [C]. MoveHQ claims 500+ [C]. Chariot claims "hundreds" [C]. MoverBase, Movegistics and Granot (in the business "since 1994" [C]) fill out the field. Prices are published and low. Elromco sells at $289 and $399 a month, month to month, with no setup fee and crews free [C, vendor]. Chariot starts at $254 a month with unlimited users and texting [C, vendor]. SmartMoving is the exception: it publishes no prices and sells 12-, 24- and 36-month terms [C, vendor]. Its contract terms are the only real lock-in at the small end. Everyone else offers free data migration to win switchers. The van-line and international end is a separate, older market. Updater bought IGC Software (surveys, estimating) and Asset Controls (warehouse and inventory) in September 2017 and combined them as MoveHQ. At the time their customers included "most of the largest van lines and hundreds of their local agents" and over 9,000 moving professionals [B, Updater release]. Voxme (Toronto) sells survey and inventory apps to international movers and claims 10,200 active users [C]. Jonas Software (Constellation) bought EWS, a moving-and-storage software provider, in 2011 [B, Jonas release]. Moveware integrates with Voxme for virtual surveys [C]. The AI survey is the live front, and a van line has already picked it. Yembo (an $8.5M Series A led by Imagen Capital Partners in 2021 [B, per the company's press page]) became Atlas Van Lines' "exclusive virtual survey and estimating platform" across nearly 350 US and Canadian agents in April 2024 [B, Atlas release]. Movegistics markets its own AI walkthrough survey [C]. US rules make the survey part of the compliance record. 49 CFR 375.401 says an interstate household-goods carrier "must conduct a physical survey" and give a written estimate based on it, unless the shipper waives the survey. Section 375.407 obliges the carrier to release a COD shipment on payment of 110% of a non-binding estimate [A, eCFR text via Cornell LII]. The estimate is therefore money at risk, which is why survey accuracy sells. The consumer front end is consolidating into the van lines. National Holding Company, parent of National Van Lines, bought Moving.com and MoveAI on 1 July 2026 [B, IAM news]. moveBuddha (since 2015) runs a comparison site listing 4,500+ movers and 1M+ reviews, with 400,000+ users a year [C]. It bought MovingCompanyReviews.com in 2022 (search summary; not opened). How this differs from the neighbours. The 4842 record is the freight-trucking operator business, not its software. The 238 FSM record covers generic dispatch for technicians who arrive with a van and a part. Moving software is built around things FSM lacks: the cubic-foot and item inventory survey, the tariff and binding or non-binding estimate, the bill of lading and its valuation, crew-hour and truck capacity planning, and storage-in-transit and warehouse vaults billed monthly. Vonigo shows the overlap. It is a generic FSM product that lists moving among a dozen mobile trades [C], and movers in the field still buy the specialist tools. Distribution decides it. The product is a commodity at $250 to $400 a month. At least ten specialist vendors and two funded leaders already sell to every mover worth selling to, and the differentiators (AI call answering, AI surveys) are shipping from everyone at once. A new entrant would have no channel that the field does not already work. Canada is not an empty niche either: Voxme is in Toronto, and Elromco and MoverBase sell in Canada. The only angle is an operator one. A BC or Canadian mover running SmartMoving or Elromco does not need new software; at most it needs a Canadian-specific add-on, which no one has shown to be a business.
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: Transportation management, dispatch, electronic logging and fuel-tax compliance.
Catalogued categories — named, not analysed
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.
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.
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. But note the shape of this industry: 85% 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.
Inside this industry
4 rows sit directly beneath 48423. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 484231 | Bulk liquids trucking, long distance | 679 | screened at 4842 |
| 484232 | Dry bulk materials trucking, long distance | 2,221 | screened at 4842 |
| 484233 | Forest products trucking, long distance | 511 | screened at 4842 |
| 484239 | Other specialized freight (except used goods) trucking, long distance | 2,210 | screened at 4842 |
Alongside it, under 4842 Specialized freight trucking
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 48421 | Used household and office goods moving | 1,310 | Moving Company Software |
| 48422 | Specialized freight (except used goods) trucking, local | 8,198 | screened at 4842 |