Regarding your feature on speed limiting in the March/April issue, one thing that should be looked at when comparing North America to Europe is the highway systems and the type of vehicles they use. They also have more truck stops available in Europe to take breaks that are non existent here in most places. Also I believe there are no speed limits on a lot of European autobahns.

I deal in the transport of live and fresh sea aquaculture products that have a very short shelf life. I have been in this business for over 22 years and it has been a downward fight the whole way. Speed limiters would make our business unprofitable to the point that we could not make the overseas flights and add a day to the product’s life.

I am on Vancouver Island and the acceptable speed on the freeway here is 120 km/h although the posted speed is 110. I have just minutes to spare to make ferry connections to the mainland. Even one long traffic light can cause us six hours delay due to a missed ferry and a whole lot of unhappy customers as they close the highway basically at 22:40 until 05:15.

There is no need for these speed limiters out here anyway. I have never witnessed trucks going much over the posted speed limit and never over the allowable limit, or as we call it “ferry speed” even on the Coquihalla or up north where speeds are kept in check by the terrain. There are the odd ones that should not be on the road anyway and that will not stop their speeding even with limiters.

There has been a simple solution to all these problems but it is too simple for the pencil pushers to understand. If (CTA head David) Bradley put in the time behind the wheel instead of at a desk along with all the other experts, they would see it. That simple rule would be NUMBER the log pages. Then the so-called cheating would end and you couldn’t run two books if the carrier issued a book each month. Get rid of loose-leaf log pages.

The impact of restrictions to the hours we can work and the speed we can drive combined with new emissions and loss of fuel mileage is not something the shippers are going to make up for. We do not need David Bradley adding to this with a PR stunt dreamed up by the big corporations trying to improve their image on the backs of hard-working drivers.

Have you ever had to stay at an airport due to a cancelled flight? That’s what it’s like to have to stop for 10 hours trapped in your truck in the middle of nowhere due to stupid log regs.

Get out of our cabs and let us drive.

One last thing: I am curious as to the number of truck accidents that were actually caused by excessive speed. I bet you will find most speed-related accidents are happening well bellow 90 kmh. In fact, I bet they’re closer to 70 kmh and are related to rollovers on ramps.

Chris Mclean

Vancouver Island, B.C.

Company owner/driver