TORONTO, Ont. –The Ontario Trucking Association’s quarterly Business e-Pluse Survey shows a growing number of Ontario trucking company executives are optimistic about the immediate future.

A total of 72% of respondents said they are optimistic about the industry’s overall prospects for the next three months, up 20% from the previous quarterly survey. Only 10% of respondents said they were pessimistic.

That represents the highest level of optimism since the OTA began the survey in the third quarter of 2008, the association notes. At that time, only 17% of carriers were optimistic about the coming quarter.

Optimism has grown steadily in every survey since the second quarter of 2009, with the optimists outnumbering the pessimists for the first time in the third quarter of 2009. Optimists finally became the majority in the first quarter of this year. The OTA said most fleet optimism is due to the recovery of the domestic economy, with 58% reporting an increase in intra-Ontario freight volumes and 65% noting an improvement in inter-provincial volumes. Last quarter, only 29% and 25% were reporting improvements, respectively.

Ontario fleet optimism is being held back by continued worries about the US economy, however. Only 26% of respondents said they’ve seen cross-border volume inprovements over the past three months.