Meet the most widely ridiculed company in trucking
Chohan Freight Forwarders has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the most disliked and widely ridiculed trucking companies in all of Canada. This is an achievement not to be downplayed.
I’m referring to the Surrey, B.C.-based trucking fleet that had its National Safety Code certificate stripped in the province of B.C. after striking six overpasses in the province over the past two years. Bridge strikes have become an epidemic in B.C., where 31 such collisions have occurred over the past two years, but no fleet has done so with such frequency as Chohan.
The incidents have even spawned the creation of an automated account on the social media platform X, which counts the number of days since the latest B.C. bridge strike. As of this writing, there have been four days without a bridge strike in B.C., according to @MVOverpassDWI, and 17 days since Chohan’s latest.
These high-profile smash-ups were well publicized and the province acted swiftly in naming and shaming the culprit and stripping it of its operating authority in the province. But keen-eyed motorists noted just days after reports of its suspension that Chohan trucks were still, in fact, running the province’s highways.
Alberta trucks move in
When contacted by media, the company said those were its Alberta-domiciled trucks, which were not affected by the B.C. suspension. Understandably, B.C. regulators – not to mention taxpayers who ultimately foot the bill for bridge maintenance and repairs – were unimpressed.
The audaciousness of Chohan to return to the scene of the crime so soon, and its ability to find shippers willing to entrust their oversized loads to its map- and measurements-challenged management and drivers, exposed a major loophole the province now wants to see closed.
B.C. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Rob Fleming penned a letter to his federal counterpart Pablo Rodriguez, which explained that a province’s ability to suspend only those carriers licensed in its own jurisdiction doesn’t adequately account for the interprovincial nature of trucking.
There’s currently no way for a province to prevent a carrier from continuing to operate within its borders using trucks plated elsewhere, as Chohan appears to have done after being suspended by B.C.
It’s a valid complaint that should be addressed. Carriers shouldn’t be able to dodge suspensions by swapping out local trucks with those domiciled elsewhere, just as they shouldn’t be permitted to register their trucks in distant jurisdictions for the benefit of lower insurance premiums.
I don’t pretend to have all the details behind Chohan’s spat of span strikes. Were erroneous permits issued? Did drivers mistakenly go off-route? Did they fail to properly measure their load? Does it matter? Once is an accident, six is a habit.
Embarrassment
And it appears in B.C., six strikes and you’re out. Less, going forward, thanks to recent amendments to the Commercial Transport Regulations and Motor Vehicle Act, which ushered in stiffer penalties for infrastructure strikes. These regulations will also require dump trucks to have in-cab warning systems that would alert a driver when the box is raised, beginning this June. (That’s a requirement I can get behind right across the country, but a subject for another day).
B.C. also hiked the fines associated with overheight vehicles to the highest levels in Canada. Carriers with a history of non-compliance or multiple infrastructure crashes will see even tougher measures, including being sent to the penalty box along with Chohan. Or as Chohan was meant to be.
If any good is to come of this embarrassing run of ineptitude, it’s the potential strengthening of enforcement and hopefully the closing of a glaring jurisdictional loophole. And also heightened awareness of the importance of measuring oversized loads, and measuring them again, before getting on the highway.
Most of those who haul oversized loads are among the most skilled and safety-conscious drivers on the highway. They’re as puzzled and embarrassed as anyone as to how Chohan struck six bridges in 24 months and how it’s able to continue operating with impunity in the province despite a suspension intended to park its trucks.
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This jurisdictional loophole is one the PMTC, and many other industry associations, has been raising with federal and Provincial Regulators for many years, and is brought up as a key area of concern each year at the Annual CCMTA Meetings, where all jurisdictions are present. It should be simple, if you are federally regulated, you should have one NSC #. All of your carriers actions should be fed into one central reporting system and there should be one safety rating score for the carrier, similar to what we see in the US. Under our current system, bad actors just registered in different, if not several jurisdictions, to skirt rules, and just carry on plying up and down or highways. The communication between jurisdictions is so bad, in many cases the regulators are not aware this is even going on. It is insane and unacceptable, yet all we keep doing is talking about it……not fixing it
Our industry doesn’t need any more negative publicity. This situation is not helping the drivers already struggling with the motoring publics trust. This negative situation is sending out a message to the public that they need to be careful around truck drivers in general not only over dimensional. The public as we have all seen , do some pretty drastic driving to go around trucks so they are not behind them. This negative situation could have a very serious outcome if the public is afraid to travel around any large vehicle.
I agree with your statements in this case and the governments across the country need to desperately look into any situation of any company doing illegal business in any way. As I discussed with Leo, know before you go and if you don’t know, don’t go! Very simple, is pressure from the companies or drivers afraid of loosing their jobs why this kind of situation is happening??
Oversize loads are not the problem , human error is the problem as professionalism goes unrewarded. Training for drivers and sanction to the driver and the carrier are the solutions. Unfortunately, more bureaucracy will be the result.
Even if a Canadian Federal Motor Carrier safety measurement system is created, uneducated , unprofessional drivers still happen. There should be a Canadian SMS registry, but even that is reactive. Prevention happens through education, mentorship and practice.
As a Truck Driving Instructor of 25 years, I took every student under low structures while reciting 4.15m while en route. One particular structure is signed 4.0m in both directions, which I pointed out as we approached at 50 km/h. The student looked at me and questioned “What do we do now?” and I would have to say, ” I think your choices are stop for the accident or stop before the collision.” Then we would put on the four way flashers and creep up to the low clearance bridge and stop to check the clearance. If there was space between the top of the dry van and the bottom of the girder , we would creep all the way through. I would explain to the student driver that otherwise if the clearance was insufficient, he/she would have to figure out how to back up in safety and find another route.
A piece of a simple solution would be for a carrier to be required to have a documented coach/ mentor / trainer to be paid double his normal daily income to sit in the passenger seat and video each driver and mentor measuring a tractor and trailer dry van, then making a pass with the dry van under a clearance of less than 4.2 metres.
That video should have to be archived as a part of his hire-on process at each successive employer, within 30 days of hire.
Every driver for every carrier should have to know maximum height of transport vehicles is 4.15m (13′ 6″) and maximum width is 2.6m (8′ 6″) or the load requires a permit and other conditions.
The real solution is training, mentorship and a sense of pride in workmanship with recognition for accomplishment.
not sticking up for carrier, but other bridges hit that often, something wrong besides carriers.
inacurate measurement of road height after paving or other road work, provincial routing.
There is more to this than untrained truck drivers
Ther le should be ONE FEDERAL NSC number for federally regulated carriers.