KAMLOOPS, B.C. – A planned protest that was to be mounted by owner/operators in Western Canada seems to have blown over before it began. Owner/operators were going to block fuel pumps at several card-lock centers in the Kamloops and Hope areas and move to the lower mainland in the first week of May, but little materialized.

“It’s really been a non-event. There may have been a truck or two at one or two cardlocks, but that’s about it,” says Louise Yako, director of policy and communications at the British Columbia Trucking Association.

On May 1, some owner/operators did block Petro-Canada and Esso fuel distribution points. Petro-Canada won a court injunction against any further blockades that same day, but Esso did not get its injunction handed down until May 3.

A source close to the cardlock protests told Truck News that the protests simply never took hold. A few trucks blocked some cardlock facilities in the Kamloops area on the morning of May 2, but they did not return.

“If there was anything, they didn’t make much of a fuss. We didn’t hear of anything in this area related to trucks, ” said Hope-area RCMP Cpl.George Preston.

A general shutdown, which was planned to start on April 30 and last until May 7, was to be planned around tax return deadlines, to keep the documents from being trucked to Revenue Canada. n