If you’ve been running freight through Pacific Highway, Sumas, or the Aldergrove crossing this winter, you don’t need a report to tell you something has shifted. The lineups are still there in the mornings, but the volume is not what it was. Booking sheets aren’t filling out the way they used to. Owner-operators who used to plan a southbound run a week in advance are now calling brokers two days out and still getting “nothing yet.”

The numbers landed this week and they confirmed what everyone in our yard had already felt. Cross-border trucking freight dropped 3.5 percent year-over-year in January 2026. That headline by itself isn’t catastrophic. What is, though, is the source of that drop. The southbound side — freight coming from the U.S. into Canada — actually gained 5.8 percent. The Canadian side collapsed. Loads going out of Canada into the U.S. fell by 17 percent in a single month. That is the largest monthly drop in Canadian cross-border freight since the pandemic.

For BC carriers, this is not abstract. The Lower Mainland sits at one of the busiest commercial corridors in the country. Lumber, produce, manufactured goods, container freight off the Port of Vancouver — a huge chunk of what moves through Surrey, Langley, and Abbotsford is destined for Washington, Oregon, and California. When 17 percent of southbound volume disappears, fleets parked here feel it first.

What’s driving it

The simplest answer is tariffs. The 2025 trade fight between Ottawa and Washington never fully settled. Section 232 duties on Canadian lumber, steel, and aluminum stayed in place. Counter-tariffs from the Canadian side came and went, with most of the retaliatory measures eventually lifted. The U.S. Surtax Remission Order on motor vehicles got extended through April 2027 just last week, which buys some breathing room for one slice of the market — but the broader picture is still uncertainty.

Shippers don’t ship when they don’t know what their landed cost will be next month. Canadian exporters who used to push three loads a week to the U.S. are now pushing one. The Canadian Trucking Alliance has been clear that a prolonged trade dispute could be a “nuclear winter” for cross-border freight — and while we’re not there yet, the January data is the first sign that the pain has moved from the boardroom to the dispatch board.

What this looks like at the yard

Sleeper trucks sitting longer between trips. Day cabs picking up the slack on regional Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley work. Owner-operators looking harder at intra-Canadian lanes — Surrey to Edmonton, Surrey to Calgary, Surrey to Kelowna — instead of stretching south. Brokers raising rates a touch on the lanes that are still moving, because there’s tonnage but the trucks willing to take it have gotten picky.

We are also seeing more carriers ask about reefer work for BC produce headed east instead of south. There is freight to be had if you’re willing to reposition.

What you can do

Three things are worth doing this month if you’re an owner-operator or a small fleet.

First, audit your customer book. If 60 percent of your revenue depends on a single U.S.-bound lane and that lane is one Section 232 ruling away from collapsing, you have a concentration problem. Add at least one solid Canadian customer this quarter.

Second, get your paperwork tight. With CBSA still recovering from system disruptions and U.S. CBP under pressure to enforce harder, the carriers getting through the crossings cleanly are the ones whose bills of lading, commercial invoices, and customs declarations match exactly. One number off and you sit in secondary inspection — sometimes for hours, sometimes for a full day.

Third, talk to your broker. Both your freight broker and your customs broker. The conversation needs to happen before the truck leaves Surrey, not after the freight is at the crossing. Customers don’t care about the regulation. They care about whether their load arrives.

Where Mainland fits in

We sell trucks. We’ve sold trucks through the 2008 recession, through the 2018 NAFTA renegotiation, through the pandemic, and through the 2024-25 freight bust. Every cycle is different. Every cycle, the carriers that come through it cleanest are the ones who right-size their fleet — selling units they don’t need, keeping the ones that pay for themselves, and not stretching capital into trucks that won’t earn during a soft quarter.

If you’re sitting on a unit that hasn’t moved in 30 days, call us. We will give you an honest number on it. If you’re looking at adding a truck for a specific intra-Canadian lane that you’ve actually got committed freight for, we will help you find the right spec — not the one with the biggest commission. That has always been the deal here.

The border is quieter right now. It won’t stay that way forever. But the next twelve months are not the time to guess. They are the time to plan.

From our family to yours — safe miles.

📍 9616 188 Street, Surrey, BC V4N 3M2 📞 1-866-888-6887 🌐 www.mainlandtts.com

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