CMHC's August numbers came out this month, and they tell a story most building centre owners already feel in their order books. Canada started homes at an annual pace of about 229,000 units in August, flat from July. Year to date, starts are down 4% from last year.
The total matters less than what's getting built. Single-detached starts fell 7% in the first quarter while multi-unit starts rose 11%. Between January and April, 58% of new starts were purpose-built rentals. The federal government's target is 500,000 homes a year, and we're building less than half that.
We had a good Homecoming. Plenty of dealers are busy. But the work is changing shape, and a lot of fleets haven't caught up.
Most building centre fleets I see were put together over the last 15 years to serve a steady stream of single-family builds and renovations. A flatbed with a Moffett for the lumber package, a boom truck for drywall and shingles, a smaller truck for the odds and ends.
That mix made sense when most of your contractor business was framing houses. It makes less sense if a bigger share of your volume now goes to three- and four-storey rental projects, backyard suites, and renovations on tight urban lots.
Those jobs ask different things of a truck. A mid-rise site wants drywall and roofing on the third floor, which means reach. A laneway suite or an infill reno wants a smaller truck that can get down a narrow street and drop a load without blocking traffic for an hour. A big rental project might want fewer, larger deliveries on a tight schedule set by the general contractor.
The most common mistake I see in a slower market is a dealer replacing an old truck with a newer version of the same truck. It feels safe. The drivers know it and the loads fit it. But you might be spending $150,000 or more to lock in a spec built for business you do less of today.
Before you replace anything, pull your delivery records for the last 12 months. Look at where the loads went, how big they were, and which trucks did the work. Count how many deliveries needed to go above the second floor. Count how many times a big truck went out with a partial load because it was the only one free.
I've watched owners do this exercise and find that their biggest truck spends half its time running small loads. In that case, the big truck can stay, and the money goes into the trucks around it.
In a booming year, you don't have time to think about fleet mix. You buy what you can get and keep running. A flatter year gives you room to look at the whole picture.
It also lines up with some deadlines. The 2027 emissions rules will push up the price of new diesel trucks, and tariffs are adding cost to chassis and bodies. If a truck in your fleet no longer fits the work, 2026 pricing gives you a reason to deal with it now.
Some of the fixes aren't new trucks at all. A Kargo King detachable system lets one chassis switch between a flatbed, a dump body and a roll-off, which suits a mixed customer base. A boom truck might serve your multi-unit contractors better than a second Moffett. A lighter truck might pick up the small reno drops so your big trucks stop running half-empty.
I've sold trucks through a lot of housing cycles. The building centres that did well through those cycles matched their fleet to the work in front of them.
If you want help looking at your delivery data and figuring out whether your fleet still fits, I'm glad to sit down with you. Our fleet cost tracker is a good place to start.