Toronto edges Calgary as top U-Haul destination

Predicting future new housing demand could be as easy as seeing where U-Haul trucks are heading.
Toronto has reclaimed the No. 1 destination city for U-Haul moving trucks, taking the top spot from Calgary, which slipped to second place after posting a 10.2 per cent decline in arrivals from a year earlier.
Toronto witnessed a 13.4 per cent increase in year-over-year arrivals in 2016 to rise one spot from its 2015 ranking and reclaim its status as the busiest Canadian city for incoming U-Haul trucks, noted U-Haul International spokesperson Andrea Batchelor, in releasing the company’s annual Top 10 Canadian destination cities list.

U-Haul is North America’s largest moving company.
Vancouver held its seventh-place ranking as a Canadian destination city for U-Haul trucks for the second year, but arrivals dropped 10.5 per cent in 2016 from a year earlier.
In descending order, Montreal, Edmonton, Ottawa and London also ranked higher than Vancouver in 2016 for in-coming U-Haul moving trucks. Hamilton was ranked No. 8.
Victoria fell from the No. 9 spot to No. 10 in 2016 after posting a 6.6 per cent drop in U-Haul arrivals from a year earlier.
U-Haul moving data can be a demographically important signal, noted real estate consultant Ozzie Jurock, who publishes the Jurock Insider. 
“The poor stuff everything into a borrowed truck; the wealthy use top-tier moving companies. The average working population goes with U-Haul,” Jurock said.

The annual U-Haul migration trends report was compiled from more than 1.7 million one-way U-Haul truck transactions in Canada during 2016, according to Batchelor.

Top 10 U-Haul destinations in 2016
(Previous year's ranking is in parenthesis)
1. Toronto (2)
2. Calgary (1)
3. Montreal (4)
4. Edmonton (3)
5. Ottawa (5)
6. London (6)
7. Vancouver (7)
8. Hamilton (8)
9. Kitchener (10)
10. Victoria (10)