More truck parking coming to B.C.’s Lower Mainland

by Truck News

DELTA, B.C. — The province of B.C. is building a truck parking lot in Delta, which will accommodate up to 40 tractor-trailers and provide washroom facilities.

The parking lot was announced by Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Todd Stone.

“Operating a commercial vehicle is demanding work, and truck drivers need safe, convenient places to park overnight,” said Stone. “The addition of new truck parking facilities in the Lower Mainland is just one of a number of commitments our government has made in B.C. on the Move to address efficiency and safety improvements for the trucking industry.”

The parking facility will be located on provincial land on Nordel Way at Hwy. 91. Work there will begin this fall with construction set to begin next spring.

“When heavy trucks have no safe, convenient place to park, they end up on our residential streets or on agricultural land,” said Surrey-Fleetwood MLA and Minister of Education Peter Fassbender. “The addition of this facility will remove some trucks from Surrey streets and improve conditions for commercial drivers.”

The province said this is the first of two new truck parking facilities that will be built in the Lower Mainland.

The B.C. Trucking Association (BCTA) welcomed the announcement.

“B.C.’s road system is the workplace of commercial vehicle operators,” said Louise Yako, BCTA president and CEO. “It’s extremely important to provide them with access to parking facilities that accommodate their vehicles and their needs.  BCTA welcomes the Ministry’s investment in this new facility and its foresight in including truck parking generally as a priority in its new Provincial Trucking Strategy.”

She hopes the addition of better parking facilities will help the industry attract more drivers.

“The trucking industry is facing a projected shortage of 2,200 to 4,500 drivers in B.C. by 2020,” she said. “To attract new recruits to truck driving, we need to be thinking beyond compensation and scheduling.  What is their day going to be like? Taking the guesswork out of something as simple as where to park will help.”

 


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  • This is good news in regards to the parking issue for tractor/trailers. The closest point to Vancouver is the dumpy truck stop in Chilliwack. The bad news is that the transportation minister thinks that $17.00 to $20.00 is a good wage for a professional driver who drives tractor/trailer. I have 35 years of class one tractor/trailer experience in Canada and the United States. I am claim free, collision free, D.O.T. violation free, clean class one license, reliable, honest, hard working, on time, pass a D.O.T. pee test, cross into the United States…… etc., etc., etc. I have a great vast knowledge and have taught other drivers in class and on road in transportation safety, produced training and education programs for drivers. My point is that I have all of this experience in the transportation industry only to sit without a job because employers think they can’t pay me enough or maybe not. What ever the reason it is not a fair statement to say that there is a drivers shortage. The drivers shortage is created by trucking companies with crappy wage offers, crappy equipment, poor management, poor dispatching, being a slave to the cause and on and on. I like the trucking industry and will continue to but this is more than just offering parking lots because if the trucking industry is just going to continue to do the crappy things they don’t do they will create even bigger parking lots for their equipment.

  • Awesome to hear. Personally, I hope the second lot can accomadate even more than 40 trucks and trailers as there are so many trucks on the road down there. Hopefully there will be some sort of system put into place as well that will prevent local drivers from parking their trucks overnight on those lots and those spaces will be for truckers who are from out of town. Anyhow, I totally applaud this effort.

  • This is belated but good news. I live in Chilliwack and always see the lots full here. But the rest of BC needs a few stops too. The Flying J in Kamloops is OK, but the few and far between Huskies suck. One thing that has to be improved is pull-outs along the highways. By the time you get to one and see it in the dark you’ve already whizzed past it. Some are so small you might as well parallel park, And the small towns throughout BC need to grow a brain cell or two. Virtually all of them are extremely truck unfriendly with no place at all to pull over much less park for the night. On the radio I’ve suggested a general boycott of all deliveries to them for a week and see if they get the message. That usually gets wide approval on the airwaves.

  • Oh Goody, another near sighted govt project! 40 spots, golly they are outdoing themselves! Where’s the other 150-200 going to park?

    Govt wants to be involved in Trucking, get the rates set where they should be and monitor all the cut throat companies that are screwing up the industry.

    • Yea, but I think you’re under estimating 150 to 200 should accurately be 1500 to 2000, and keep security on board for those drivers that park ALL weekend and go home, or the ones that do their service on their units and leave a mess. Have those that abuse it tagged.