Boreal Lab Studio · Industry report · November 2026
Seven in ten Ontario carrier websites can’t take a driver application.
We checked 387 Ontario trucking company websites the same way, on a phone and on a desktop, on November 4, 2026. Most of them open, work on a phone and are secure. Far fewer let a driver apply or a shipper ask for a rate without picking up the phone. These are the totals. No company is named.
Six numbers
- 71%cannot take a driver application online275 of 387 sites
- 14%have a quote form that asks where the load is going and what it is55 of 387 sites
- 71median mobile speed score out of 100369 sites, Google’s Lighthouse test
- 93%work properly on a phone354 of 379 sites
- 96%open securely over HTTPS370 of 387 sites
- 77%show a date from this year or last250 of 325 sites that show a date
Hiring
207 sites say they are hiring. 95 of them make the driver call or print a form.
What a driver finds on the hiring page, once they get there. Only 54% of hiring sites take an application online, on a form or a job tool. The rest hand the driver a PDF, a general contact form, an email address or nothing at all.
The eight checks
The sites work. Most just don’t let a driver or a shipper act.
Share of measured sites that pass each check, from the basics most sites get right down to the two actions most sites leave out. Of the 137 sites with a quote form, only 55 ask where the load is going and what it is. The other 82 take a name and a message, so dispatch still has to call back before it can price anything.
Speed on a phone
The median mobile speed score is 71. Only 15% of sites score 90 or better.
Google’s Lighthouse performance score, 0 to 100, on a simulated mid-range phone over a slow mobile connection. Google calls 90 and up good, 50 to 89 needs work, and under 50 poor. On that phone, half the homepages take 7.5 seconds or more to show their main content. On a desktop over a home connection the same homepages load in a median 1.6 seconds.
- 0 to 49
- 50 to 69
- 70 to 89
- 90 to 100
How we measured
One method for every site.
- Which companies
- A random sample of 650 Ontario-based trucking companies with 2 to 200 trucks, drawn from the public U.S. DOT carrier register, which lists carriers that run into the United States. Their website is the domain of the company email they publish. Carriers that run only inside Canada are not in that register, so they are not in this sample.
- What counted
- 387 sites loaded and could be measured. 99 domains had no real website (a parked page, “coming soon” or a near-empty page) and are left out. 164 sites blocked automated visits, returned an error or did not answer; we count those as unknown, never as a problem.
- Works on a phone
- Opened at 390 pixels wide as an iPhone. It passes when the page is set up for phones and does not run wider than the screen.
- Hiring page
- A link to careers, jobs or a driver application, or a hiring message such as “drivers wanted”, on the homepage or its contact pages.
- Driver application
- On each hiring site we opened the hiring page, the homepage and up to three “apply” links. “Online application” means a form with at least four fields that asks for a name and a way to reach the driver plus licence, experience or a file upload, or an embedded job tool. “PDF to print” is a downloadable application. “General contact form” is a name-and-message form with no application. “Email or call only” offers an address or a phone number. “No way to apply” offers none of these.
- Quote form
- A form on the homepage, the quote page or the contact page that asks about the freight (pickup, delivery, pallets, weight or a quote). A general contact form counts under “any online form”, not as a quote form. A quote form “asks the route and the load” when it has a pickup or origin field, a delivery or destination field, and a size field (pallets, pieces, weight or dimensions): the minimum dispatch needs to price a move.
- Mobile speed score
- Google Lighthouse 13, performance category only, with its default mobile settings: a simulated mid-range phone with a slowed processor over a slow 4G connection. One run per homepage, so treat a single site’s score as rough; the median across 369 sites is steady. “Main content shown” is Lighthouse’s largest contentful paint.
- Load time
- From the start of the request to the page’s load event, on a desktop browser over a home connection. One visit per site, so treat single sites as rough; the median across all sites is steady.
- HTTPS
- The site opens at an https address with a valid certificate and stays there.
- Last updated
- The newest year the site shows: the copyright year in the footer or the latest date in its sitemap. 62 measured sites show no date and are left out of that number.
Free to quote with credit to Boreal Lab Studio and a link to this page. Questions about the method: hello@boreallab.ca.
Show every number as a table
| Measure | Sites | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Open over HTTPS | 370 of 387 | 96% |
| Work on a phone | 354 of 379 | 93% |
| Dated this year or last | 250 of 325 | 77% |
| Any online form | 285 of 387 | 74% |
| Hiring page or section | 207 of 387 | 54% |
| Online quote form | 137 of 387 | 35% |
| Online driver application | 112 of 387 | 29% |
| Quote form that asks the route and the load | 55 of 387 | 14% |
| Hiring sites: online application | 112 of 207 | 54% |
| Hiring sites: pdf to print | 9 of 207 | 4% |
| Hiring sites: general contact form | 33 of 207 | 16% |
| Hiring sites: email or call only | 31 of 207 | 15% |
| Hiring sites: no way to apply | 22 of 207 | 11% |
| Quote forms that ask the route and the load | 55 of 137 | 40% |
| Median mobile speed score | 369 | 71 / 100 |
| Mobile speed score 0 to 49 | 29 of 369 | 8% |
| Mobile speed score 50 to 69 | 138 of 369 | 37% |
| Mobile speed score 70 to 89 | 147 of 369 | 40% |
| Mobile speed score 90 to 100 | 55 of 369 | 15% |
| Median time to main content on a phone | 369 | 7.5s |
| Median homepage load time, desktop | 387 | 1.6s |
| Desktop load time under 2 s | 245 of 387 | 63% |
| Desktop load time 2 to 4 s | 98 of 387 | 25% |
| Desktop load time 4 to 6 s | 25 of 387 | 6% |
| Desktop load time 6 to 8 s | 8 of 387 | 2% |
| Desktop load time over 8 s | 11 of 387 | 3% |
Can a driver apply on your site from the cab?
Boreal Lab Studio builds carrier websites with a driver application that works on a phone and a quote form on the first screen that asks what dispatch needs. See what we build or send us your website.