The freight market,
measured this morning.
Truck wait times at the Canada–US crossings that carry the freight, the energy prices that set next month's fuel surcharge, and the exchange rate your customs value settles at. Read from the publishers' own data feeds overnight — every figure dated, every source linked, nothing estimated.
How long trucks are waiting right now.
These are commercial vehicle lanes only — the truck lanes, not the car lanes, which is the distinction most published wait times skip. A crossing under fifteen minutes needs no planning around. Past an hour, assume a same-day appointment is at risk and that the driver’s hours-of-service clock is burning in the queue. Where a FAST figure is shown alongside the standard one, the gap between them is what pre-clearance is worth at that bridge today.
| Crossing | Route | Standard lanes | FAST lanes | Lanes open | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ambassador Bridge | Windsor – Detroit | 35 min | — | 5 | At 11:00 pm EDT |
| Blue Water Bridge | Sarnia – Port Huron | 90 min | No delay | 2 | At 11:00 pm EST |
| Peace Bridge | Fort Erie – Buffalo | 10 min | — | 4 | At 11:47 pm EDT |
| Queenston–Lewiston Bridge | Queenston – Lewiston | No delay | — | 2 | At 11:47 pm EDT |
| Thousand Islands Bridge | Lansdowne – Alexandria Bay | No delay | — | 1 | At 11:00 pm EDT |
| Champlain | Lacolle – Champlain | No delay | No delay | 2 | At 3:00 pm EDT |
| Pacific Highway | Surrey – Blaine | No delay | — | 2 | At 8:00 pm PDT |
| Sweetgrass | Coutts – Sweetgrass | 10 min | — | 1 | At 9:00 am MDT |
| Pembina | Emerson – Pembina | 60 min | — | 1 | At 7:00 pm CDT |
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Times are as published by the border agency at the moment of reading and change through the day.
Fuel and currency, before they reach your invoice.
A freight rate is a lane price plus a fuel surcharge, and the surcharge is indexed to energy prices that move weeks before carriers re-file their tables. Watching the index is how a shipper sees an increase coming instead of discovering it on an invoice. The exchange rate does the same job on the other side of the ledger: it sets the customs value of a US import and the Canadian-dollar cost of every US gallon a carrier burns.
Official rate for July 27, 2026, against 1.4067 on July 14, 2026. A higher number means a weaker Canadian dollar: US-priced imports land dearer, and Canadian carriers pay more for US fuel.
- Energy1518.05+7.5%
Crude oil, natural gas and coal — the input behind every fuel surcharge.
+0.2% since the week of June 17, 2026
- All commodities721.67+4%
The broad basket: what Canada exports, priced in US dollars.
+0.2% since the week of June 17, 2026
- Forestry480.07+1.9%
Lumber and pulp — the flatbed and dry van demand signal.
+1.3% since the week of June 17, 2026
- Agriculture368.78+0.4%
Grain and oilseed — hopper, reefer and produce season demand.
+4.5% since the week of June 17, 2026
Week of July 22, 2026, with the bold change measured against the week of July 15, 2026. Source: Bank of Canada
What a shipper actually does with this.
Decide whether today is a same-day promise
If the crossing on your lane is running under fifteen minutes, a same-day cross-border delivery is a normal ask. Past an hour, the queue is eating hours-of-service time the driver needs at the other end, and the honest answer to your customer is a next-morning delivery rather than a missed afternoon appointment. Checking before you commit costs nothing; checking after you commit costs a service failure.
Know whether a fuel increase is coming
Carriers index fuel surcharges to a published reference price and re-file weekly, so an energy move shows up in your invoices one to several weeks later. A sustained rise in the energy index is your notice to lock contract lanes now and to expect spot quotes to firm. A sustained fall is your opening to renegotiate — the surcharge falls automatically, the linehaul does not.
Sanity-check a cross-border quote
A US-priced quote converted at a stale exchange rate is a quote that will not match the invoice. Ask which currency the rate is in, which rate it converts at, and on what date — and check it against the Bank of Canada's published rate for that day. The same rate governs the customs value your duty and GST are calculated on, so a sloppy conversion costs twice.
How this page is produced
Overnight, an automated process reads each publisher’s own machine-readable feed and writes down exactly what it returned. Nothing on this page is typed in, rounded to look tidier, estimated from a trend, or carried over from yesterday. If a feed is unreachable or changes shape, the block it fed is removed and the page says so — a missing number is recoverable, a wrong one published under our name is not. Last measured July 28, 2026.
The terms behind these figures.
- Commercial vehicle lanes
- Commercial vehicle lanes are the truck lanes at a border crossing, separate from the passenger car and pedestrian lanes at the same bridge or plaza. They are the only lanes that matter to freight, and their wait times routinely differ from the passenger lanes by an hour or more at the same crossing at the same moment — which is why a wait time quoted without saying which lane it refers to is useless for planning a delivery.
- FAST lane
- A FAST lane is a dedicated border lane for shipments where the importer, the carrier and the driver all hold Free and Secure Trade approval. Because the security screening is done in advance, FAST loads are processed with a shortened inspection and usually clear faster than standard commercial traffic. The programme is run jointly by CBSA and CBP and applies in both directions.
- Fuel surcharge
- A fuel surcharge is the part of a freight rate that moves with the price of diesel rather than with the lane. Carriers publish a surcharge table indexed to a reference fuel price and update it weekly, so a change in energy prices reaches a shipper's invoice on a delay of one to several weeks. Watching the energy index rather than the invoice is how you see the increase before it arrives.
- Bank of Canada commodity price index
- The Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index, or BCPI, tracks the US-dollar spot prices of the commodities Canada produces, indexed so that 1972 equals 100. It is published weekly with sub-indexes for energy, metals and minerals, forestry, agriculture and fish. For freight, the energy sub-index is a leading indicator of fuel surcharges, and the forestry and agriculture sub-indexes track the demand behind flatbed, hopper and reefer capacity.
- USD/CAD rate
- The USD/CAD rate is the number of Canadian dollars one US dollar buys. The Bank of Canada publishes an official daily rate each business day, and that published rate — not a live market quote — is what customs valuations and most cross-border freight contracts settle against. A rising number means the Canadian dollar is weaker, which raises the landed cost of a US-priced import and raises the Canadian-dollar cost of US fuel.
About this page and these numbers.
How often is this page updated?
What is a good truck wait time at the Canada–US border?
What are FAST lanes and why is their wait time different?
Why show a commodity price index instead of the diesel price?
Why does the exchange rate matter to a shipper?
Can I use these numbers in my own reporting?
For the month’s narrative rather than today’s numbers, read the monthly freight market update. For the annual data set — trade values by mode, top crossings, provincial splits — see Canada freight statistics. To keep your own loads out of the queue, start with the cross-border checklist and our Canada–US cross-border service.
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