Does Rand McNally still rank major/basic trading areas

[KJW]

Hello all,

I normally post at the Northwest Arkansas forum, but I thought perhaps this question might reach more people out here.

Rand McNally used to publish a hardback book of maps and information on American States. Sad to say I can't remember the exact name of it but you could always find one in most American libraries. The maps didn't have highways on them, but rather each state with counties, railroad lines and (if states have them) town/township divisions within counties. These big books also had other maps of, for instance, federal highways, military installations, etc.

What these particular books also had were maps of America's major and basic trading areas (this map's in .pdf format I'm linking to). A major trading area (i.e. Dallas/Fort Worth, #7 on that map) is an area of America, where, by their research, most of the commercial, financial or media activity within a county or parish either emanated from or centered around a certain very large city. The major trading area was broken up into basic trading areas (i.e., within the D/FW major trading areas there were included basic trading regions such as Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, Amarillo, Lubbock, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Midland/Odessa, San Angelo, Texarkana, Tyler, Shreveport LA, Monroe LA.) based around smaller cities where business, newspaper, etc. flow would originate.

Does anyone know if Rand McNally is still doing this? There've been some incredible changes in northwest Arkansas in this decade and I'd be curious to see where R McN is setting their trade boundaries for this region.

Thanks in advance for any answers on this.