John G. Smith is Newcom Media's vice-president - editorial, and the editorial director of its trucking publications -- including Today's Trucking, trucknews.com, and Transport Routier. The award-winning journalist has covered the trucking industry since 1995.
Gene Orlick's tenure as chairman of the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) can still reasonably be counted in days. The owner of Alberta-based Orlicks Inc. assumed the role just last week, during the alliance's spring board meeting in Arizona. But his mandate already includes one issue that will define the nation's largest trucking organization for years to come. Who will replace David Bradley?
Volvo's Canadian dealers are celebrating. Goran Nyberg, president of Volvo Trucks North America, noted that the company's retail share in Canada hit 16.3% in 2014, complete with 54% of the sleepers that have 10-13-litre engines. Employees responded to numbers like that with chants of "all time high". And today they represent the first wave of North American dealers to learn about several powertrain enhancements available to buyers in 2017.
HAGERSTOWN, MD -Volvo Trucks North America has unveiled a series of powertrain enhancements today, highlighted by changes that will transform wasted heat into horsepower, bring the automated I-Shift and downspeeding to vocational haulers, and a cruise that memorizes terrain.
HAMILTON, ON -- A Brampton, Ontario truck driver who was involved in a collision that closed Ontario's Burlington Skyway for four days in 2014 has been acquitted of impaired driving charges. Sukhvinder Singh Rai registered almost triple the legal limit of alcohol that day - after his trailer's raised dump body slammed into the bridge structure -- but Judge Fred Campling ruled the test results were inadmissible because they were collected too long after the crash, local media report.
Canada's for-hire trucking operations hauled 745.5 million tonnes of freight in 2014, up 7.9% over 2013, Statistics Canada reported today. The related revenue was up 14.8%, reaching 14 cents per tonne-kilometre, while domestic freight generated 16 cents per tonne-kilometre. Most of the weight (86.2%) involved domestic shipments, which rose 8.3% in the year. General freight led the way in Ontario and Quebec, while petroleum was the driving force in Alberta. General freight and motor vehicle parts accounted for most of the cross-border shipments by weight.
BURLINGTON, ON - Pat Sheehan, who owned and operated a Volvo truck dealership that bears his family name, has died of cancer. He was 75. Sheehan emigrated to Canada in 1965 and began work as a long-haul truck driver before switching to heavy truck sales. In 1989, he and his wife Gayle opened a used truck lot, and two years later they secured a Volvo franchise. Sheehan's Truck Centre moved to Harvester Road in Burlington, ON in 1996. The funeral will be held in the community's St. Gabriel's Church on March 17 -- St. Patrick's Day. The family patriarch retired in 1999, when control of the business shifted to their daughter, Kelly, and son, Dennis.
TORONTO, ON - Barely 3% of Canada's truck drivers and techs are women, but that is something the organizers of Trucking HR Canada's second annual Women with Drive summit hope to change. More than 180 industry representatives packed into a Mississauga, Ontario hotel on March 3, discussing ways to recruit, train and retain more women in a traditionally male-dominated field. "It isn't very often in our industry that we have this many women together in one room," said Angela Splinter, CEO of Trucking HR Canada. "Our goal is to keep that conversation going." There were plenty of conversations to be had.
