TORONTO — Canuck truckers who use Ontario’s private toll highway might have a friend in the New York Motor Truck Association. (NYSMTA).

Like the companies that go around buying up natural gas in bulk and then selling it back to customers at a discount, The NYMTA purchases miles on American toll highways in bulk and then sells them at a serious discount to smaller fleets. And the CEO of the association Bill Joyce says he’s been meeting with representatives from the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) and the owners of the privately owned 407 Highway north of Toronto to see if similar arrangements can be made in Canada.

Carriers can save 30 percent on tolls by buying miles from
Bill Joyce, who’s talking to 407 ETR about a similar plan here

He tells TodaysTrucking.com that it’s too early to predict how the Hwy. 407 operators will respond, but added the OTA has been very supportive of the idea so far.

A company, he says, can save up to 30 percent of its toll payments by purchasing through his organization.

Joyce’s “non-profit” organization has a “for profit” subsidiary called BestPass, which works as an advocate for small fleets who want to minimize toll and weigh-scale costs, not to mention administrative headaches. In many states, the DOT has approved the use of transponders for pre-approved fleets so trucks that are running compliant can bypass weigh stations, thereby saving time, money, fuel, aggravation and everything else that comes along with the coop experience.

There’s no similar compliance-based transponder system in Canada, although Alberta has being toying with an on-again, off-again, (perhaps on once again) program called Partners in Compliance (PIC).

The transponder system can be expensive and difficult to administer, especially for smaller fleets, however.

That’s where BestPass comes in. “It’s like we’ll take all the headaches out of it, and instead of a guy getting six invoices and trying to get his wife to figure out who he owes all the time, we’ll do it an it still saves him money.”