Week of May 18-22
COMMERCIAL VEHICLE ACTIVITY
Down 2.1 % from previous week
Commercial vehicle activity levels in North America declined slightly during the third week of May. Overall, the level of activity dropped from 88.3 % during the week of May 11th to 15th, to 86.4 % for the week of May 18th to 22nd, down of 2.1 percentage points compared to the February 2020 reference period.
In Canada, however, the average data show a return to normal, with figures close to 100% throughout the third week of May. In all countries monitored using global data from more than 2 million vehicles connected to Geotab, Canada was the country with the best recovery this week.
Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Quebec remain the three provinces with the highest level of commercial vehicle activity compared to the period prior to the COVID-19 crisis. At the other extreme, Maritimes provinces and Alberta had the lowest scores, with a sharp decline in Alberta, from 90% to 77.4% during the third week of May.
On the US side, data are generally stable, and the hardest hit states remain the same, with New York in the lead, followed by Massachusetts, New Mexico and North Dakota.
It should be noted that while the week of May 18th began in Canada with Queen Victoria Day and National Patriots Day, it ended with the start of a major holiday in the United States, Memorial Day. Both holidays will surely have had a major impact on the levels of commercial vehicle activity in both countries. On May 18th, Canada had a record low activity level of 24%, while on May 25th, the United States had a record decline, at 32% of the normal activity level compared to last February.
The two public holidays also had a significant impact on the cross-border movement of commercial vehicles between the two countries. For both the weekend of May 18th and May 25th, the data collected show the two most significant drop in border crossing of commercial vehicles, just after the Easter weekend. However, outside of these easily explainable days of decline, trade between Canada and the United States increased slightly during the week of May 18th to 22nd. For outbound border traffic, May 19th shows a peak of 82%, almost 10 points higher than the previous week. For inbound movement, the week started slowly at 74% and ended with data similar to border crossing from Canada to the US, at 82%.
For details and raw data from Geotab’s Health of Commercial Transportation activities Dashboard, click here.
Note: Data compiled by Geotab compare current levels of transportation industry activity to normal levels for the reference period of February 1st to March 15th. This data has been aggregated and anonymized from over 2 million Geotab connected commercial vehicles globally.
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