TORONTO — After two weeks of weathering anti-truck salvos in local media, the Ontario Trucking Association gathered its members yesterday to cheer the industry’s accomplishments and lay out an agenda for the coming year.

At the association’s annual general meeting in Toronto, OTA president David Bradley pointed to a raft of achievements, including changes to municipal act regulations outlawing the introduction of municipal trucking fees, provincial agreement to join the International Registration Plan, lower workers’ compensation premiums, and the postponement of mandatory annual emissions tests for trucks.

“These actions add up to millions of dollars in savings for carriers,” Bradley said.

Bradley cautioned that the industry faces challenges on economic and regulatory fronts. He called on the province to repeal its sales tax on auto insurance premiums, warranty repairs, and maintenance and repair labor, and back off plans to test emissions of heavy trucks unless out-of-province carriers receive an equal level of scrutiny.

Bradley says the OTA will push the province to implement key elements of Target ’97, a list of regulatory and administrative reforms developed by industry and government leaders.

These include revamping the province’s carrier profile system; revising hours-of-service regulations; introducing an effective carrier safety ratings system; re-writing and updating the inspection and maintenance regulations; and improving the written and on-road Class A driver’s license test.

The OTA isn’t the only Ontario-based highway-user lobby with truck safety on its agenda.

Bradley has spent recent weeks fending off attacks from the Canadian Automobile Association and Canadians for Responsible and Safe Highways (CRASH), an Ottawa-based lobby group funded in part by rail interests.
The groups have seized on the results of a recent truck-inspection blitz in the Toronto area where trucks had been reported found with a variety of patchwork repairs, including some made with duct tape and chicken wire. On Nov. 11, CRASH released an Angus Reid Group poll it had commissioned calling for trucks to be equipped with electronic event recorders akin to the “black boxes” used on aircraft and trains.

Bradley has been trying to take the high road.

“I guess they’re responding to a recent spate of rollover accidents around Toronto,” he told Today’s Trucking earlier this month. “Frankly, I’d rather spend time working on better, more constructive ways to address the state of truck safety in this province, by taking a leadership position and by working with government, and not resorting to cheap attacks through the media.”