CALGARY — Alberta truckers are joining forces with the other provincial trucking associations to support a change to the International Registration Plan that should save the trucking industry about $81 million per year.

According to the Alberta Motor Transport Association, IRP — the organization responsible for establishing truck registration reciprocity rules — is set to vote on a ballot that would allow carriers to pay registration fees based on actual mileage and automatically register each truck with each IRP jurisdiction.

If the ballot passes, it would mean that industry would not be overpaying registration fees due to overestimated mileages or the purchase of trip permits for jurisdictions trucks don’t operate in, explains AMTA in a newsletter.

As well, adding and removing vehicles from IRP would become administratively simpler; and?fleets could operate into any and all IRP jurisdictions for maximum flexibility without extra paperwork.

The AMTA states that carriers that still might overpay registration fees might be new fleets in their first year of operation since they are required to use the IRP mileage chart, which may not always accurately reflect their first year of operations.

However, after the first year, those fleets would pay registration fees based on their actual mileage.

The vote is set to take place in May, with January 1, 2013, as the expected implementation date.