Greater Montreal is the second-largest industrial market in Canada, with roughly 380 million square feet of inventory and one of the lowest industrial vacancy rates in North America — under 2% through most of 2023–2025. The market is anchored by the Port of Montreal, which handled 1.46 million TEUs in 2024 (down from a typical ~1.7M-TEU baseline due to a labour dispute that compressed Q4 volumes) and remains the largest container port east of the St. Lawrence. The port's terminals at Viau, Cast, and the new Contrecœur expansion all generate continuous demand for container staging, chassis pools, and trailer drop yards within trucking range of the harbour.
The 40, 13, 15, and 20 are the freight arteries that define industrial demand. The Lachine corridor — between the Port of Montreal and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport — concentrates the highest IOS demand, with the Pointe-Saint-Charles and Anjou submarkets feeding container, fleet, and 3PL operators. The 40 corridor running west to the Ontario border anchors transcontinental freight, with CN's Taschereau yard serving as the primary east-west intermodal interchange. Laval and the South Shore (Longueuil, Boucherville, Saint-Hubert) host fleet compounds, food-and-beverage distribution, and an emerging EV-supply-chain cluster anchored by Northvolt's Saint-Basile-le-Grand gigafactory.
The Montreal IOS market has tightened materially since 2020. Port of Montreal volumes have grown faster than terminal land could be expanded, the Contrecœur expansion is still years from full operation, and the underlying scarcity of properly zoned IOS land near the port has compressed rates. Operators are increasingly leasing satellite yards in Laval and the South Shore to handle overflow from harbour-adjacent locations.