It’s hard to be profitable in trucking without strategically located facilities. Several large players recently told me they consider themselves to be in the real estate business, not the trucking business. That’s how important dirt is to our sector!

If you’re one of the lucky ones who owns your own real estate, the last year has been a windfall. Count your blessings.

If you lease your facility and haven’t been paying attention to the market, you’re in for serious sticker shock come renewal time.

Dubious honor

According to my pals at real estate broker Colliers International, Canadian cities have some of the lowest warehouse vacancy rates in the world. Toronto’s vacancy rate of 0.5% makes it the tightest warehouse market in North America, closely followed by Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal.

Colliers’ competitor CBRE reports that the industrial real estate availability rate across Canada was at 2.9% in the first quarter of 2021, down from 3.1% the same time last year. The company says 2.4 million square feet of logistics space is under construction but most of it is already leased.

It’s possible that Canada could run out of warehousing by the end of the 2021.

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