Gravel haulers interrupt truck inspections in Milton, North Bay

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MILTON, Ont. — Truck inspection activities have been ground to a halt at the Trafalgar South Inspection Station over the past two days, as disgruntled gravel haulers have overtaken the site to protest overloading by customers and overzealous ticketing by MTO enforcement officers.

The Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) yesterday issued an alert, noting that at one point more than 50 trucks were parked at the weigh station, backing traffic up for five kilometres on Hwy. 401. Another protest took place in North Bay, involving about 60 drivers, the OTA reports.

Bob Nichols, spokesman for the MTO, told Trucknews.com the department will be meeting with aggregate haulers today to better understand their beef.

“As a ministry, our first concern is the safety of those using our highways,” he said. “Safety is our top priority.”

He said the protests in no way affected truck safety, with inspection efforts being uninterrupted at nearby scales in Whitby and Putnam.

“Aggregate haulers are protesting at one of our highway weigh stations after being charged for overweight loads,” Nichols acknowledged. “The rules we have in place about truck inspections and vehicle weight restrictions are designed to ensure that our roads are safe. Ministry staff have met with representatives, and have scheduled an additional meeting for Friday to get a clear understanding of their concerns and requests. As always, we are open to listening to our partners’ concerns and to working with them on solutions.”

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  • Milton is one of the worse and most unfair inspection stations in Intario. The officers think they’re above the law. The treat drivers like we’re uneducated. Anyhow with that being said ” hats off to the gravel haulers”

  • It’s a good team effort, if trucking profession wants to flourish we have to take a team lessons from this incident….otherwise these bastards will nail us hard

  • I drive this road daily with the gravel haulers. They sit in the middle lane and either drive too fast tailgating you or go the 105 kmh limit blocking traffic, not pulling into the low lane when clear. As I have always said…if you can’t read the road signs, GET OFF THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!

  • The MTO is not about safety it is about how much money can be collected. The main requierment for an inspector is a police foundations course. If safety was a first concern then some trucking experince would be needed but not at the MTO.

  • If the gravel haulers are overweight then they should be fined. They should follow the rules like everybody is expected to. This is not the first time that they have held a protest in this manner. If the ticket is not correct they can always fight it in court.

    I understand that their customers overload them but they have a responsibility to ensure that they are of legal weight. They should be boycotting their customers – not allowing the customers to ship more than they should and then ask the law to forgive them. Where would the limit be then?

    As for the comments that the scale operators are over-zealous I disagree. The law is the law and everyone should be enforced to the same degree. We need to become an industry of compliance, not one of who can avoid the law the longest and get away with it.

    Jim

  • Obviously we have a problem! I understand the MTO have a job to do, and in doing their job of keeping the highways safe they need to be MORE knowledgable and exercise less haste towarwd truck drivers. They need to listen to drivers, be a bit more plesant and forth coming with information towards them. Some of these MTO officer dont understant they are sometimes causing disruption to many commercial vehicles owners and coperation. What happens at these scales can determine if some companies survive of dispose of there entire fleet, lay of their drivers and staff causing them to go on unemployment. As a result we are currently faced with many drivers who are looking for work in the trucking industy, but, no one will hire them. They are all deemed to be unsafe drivers by the insurance companies due to these fines. Its a vicious cycle. Gravel hauler and many others commercial fleet are faced with fines, some of which makes no sense.
    We need the MTO services to keep our roads safe, we need them to advise us, work with us, help us to become a safe and better industry, educate drivers, offer seminers, understand the repercussions of fines to the industry.

    I visited the truck show a couple weeks ago, the MTO officer at the MTO booth thought he was at the scales, he didnt know how to interact with the general trucking public – smile with the public

  • The axle weight is impossible to be perfect as for gravel moves while loading and drive mto us juat being dumb about this and not understanding the situation. There is no possible way that I could be perfectly balanced.