Ontario unveils staggered commercial plate-price rises

by Truck News

TORONTO, Ont. – Commercial plate prices in Ontario will go up by 2% from July 2020 and will continue to rise by 2% until 2023.

Meanwhile certain fees, such as oversize single trip and blanket permits will increase by 2% as of next month.

The highest-priced commercial plates will go from $4,693 in 2019 to $4,786.75 in 2020. This price will rise by 2% each year until 2023.

The government announcement was reported Friday by the Ontario Trucking Association.

In 2014, after a prolonged absence of fee increases, the government of the time introduced steep hikes of up to 70% for commercial plates and fees, the association said.

The OTA said it told the government then that such rapid increases could not be absorbed in the supply chain and that any increases should be modest and better planned by being tied to either the CPPI or inflation.

“While no one ever wants to pay more in fees, a measured and planned approach like this allows the industry to work with other members of the supply chain to discuss these plate increases in advance of them taking effect,” said OTA chair David Carruth.

“As an industry, what we’d like to see is these extra plate and fee revenues being directed to MTO and other provincial enforcement officers to support targeted enforcement aimed at the bottom of our industry who use ELD cheat devices, emissions control delete kits, deactivated speed limiters and those who use the Driver Inc model for employing drivers and to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and WSIB remittances at the expense of responsible, compliant carriers.”

The OTA will be sending a notice to all shipper associations educating them on these plate increases, the group said.


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  • Increasing rates is never something that trucking likes to see, but if we’re honest, they need to go up. Unfortunately, the increased rates won’t be going to the things that really need looking after, such as altenatives to the 401 in the GTA, widening the 401 outside of the GTA, better training for entry level drivers, the list goes on. What we DO NOT need is the OTA once again using the government to help extinguish the competition of smaller companies. Unlike the OTA companies, the smaller companies can’t have 2 or more trucks complete a load, because they don’t have a bunch of trucks sitting around waiting their turn. Their “driver shortage” has been shown to be as much an over abundance (over purchasing in the name of growth) of the large carriers, and now that they have talked the governments into ELD’s, they sure won’t be mentioning the preliminary report showing an increase fatality rate in truck involved accidents since their implementation. With the rates being lower, truck & maintenance costs going up, one would think that if the OTA was secure in their business model, they would be able to wait for the market to cull the weak, but an expansion heyday and other poor business practices have them every bit as much on the edge as the small carriers, it’s just that they have the governments ear. improve roads, train better, address over regulation – and tell ALL carriers to sink or swim on their business model.

  • They ate just increasing everything to the point it won’t make it profitable enough to keep running.
    Poor way to run the Country