Truck stop idling should be banned

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Dear Editor:

Let’s talk trucking, air and noise pollution.

The other day, I was coming back from US and running out of hours, so I had to stop at the Flying J in London, Ont. Weather was nice, temperature about 15 degrees. Still more than half of those trucks parked at the truck stop were idling.

Now gentlemen, since you’re trying to slow us down to just about 5 km/h above the speed limit, using the excuses as saving the environment, fuel economy will definitely improve, but not so sure for safety.

(I’m not saying it will not, but as an owner/operator I’m not driving my truck any faster than 106-107 km/h).

I know that every truck burns about 1 US gallon of fuel an hour. For 10 hours that is 10 gallons which if your average fuel consumption is 7 mpg, equals 70 miles of driving plus wear and tear on the engine.

And this is only an average calculation for one truck.

Figure out how many trucks are parked overnight at the truck stops troughout Ontario and Canada, figure that only 25-30% of them are idling their engines and see how much fuel is burned for no reason.

Now, most of the drivers idling their trucks are company drivers, they are not paying for fuel or truck repairs and therefore, they don’t care.

Another thing is noise pollution, for those of us that don’t idle and try to keep windows a little bit open for fresh air full of exhaust fumes.

My question for you is: Is there any possibility to make a law and have the Ministry of Environment go and enforce it?

Let’s say you idle your truck for longer than 15 minutes when temperatures are between -5 degrees and 30 degrees C, you get a fine of $1,000 for first offence, company gets $5,000, second goes up for the driver to $3,000 and the company gets $20,000.

Lots of other states south of the border have laws like this.

Smoking is bad, idling is just about the same.

Last time I checked, exhaust fumes from diesel engines contain CO2, lead, sulfur, NOx gases, tar.

Try going on one of those truck stops at night, walk in the middle of it and look toward the light. You can actually see the cloud of fumes over the trucks on many nights.

Don’t believe me? Go and see for yourself.

Velibor Perisic

Via e-mail

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Truck News is Canada's leading trucking newspaper - news and information for trucking companies, owner/operators, truck drivers and logistics professionals working in the Canadian trucking industry.


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