FORT ERIE, Ont. (April 14, 2005) — Sunday no longer has to be a day of rest for cross-border food haulers like Erb Transport.

That’s because a year of lobbying by the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) has finally paid off in getting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement weekend hours of operation at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, Ont. and Buffalo, N.Y.

The CTA has just learned the FDA has agreed to begin processing paperwork for clearance on Sundays from 1 pm to 9 pm. By not having a presence at the Peace Bridge on weekends, any paperwork requiring FDA review would have to wait until Monday morning to receive final clearance and be unloaded at the customer’s facility.

This impacted a great number of shipments from Ontario into the U.S. (Twenty-three percent of total truck tonnage destined for New York State from Ontario is food product, the CTA says). In response, some Canadian shippers and trucking companies were forced to purchase, lease, or rent properties to stage equipment for pick-up by U.S. carriers for weekend and Monday deliveries.

The news is being welcomed by many carriers hauling food and grocery products into the northeast U.S., as well as other members of the Canadian supply chain and their U.S. customers.

Wendell Erb, general manager of the Erb Group — a 700-truck temperature controlled carrier — told Today’s Trucking this morning that he appreciates the support by the CTA despite the issue being one that affects primarily a niche group of carriers. “This is going to add flexibility and make us more efficient right off the bat,” he said from his fleet’s New Hamburg, Ont. headquarters. “It used to be you could cross pretty much any time, but since FDA tightened things down, it closed the window of opportunity for crossing the border. All of a sudden that flexibility wasn’t there anymore.”

Erb says that the extra day or so of transit time would create dispatch problems and hold back drivers ready to leave on Sunday afternoon.
“Loads that were loaded on a Friday couldn’t cross until Monday morning, and then there’s just a logjam of trucks come Monday with food products that couldn’t be delivered to the U.S. (customers) until that night or even Tuesday morning,” says Erb, whose company hauls about 300 loads of FDA-approved food a week across the border.

Added CTA CEO David Bradley in a statement: “It has always seemed to us that the cost of providing some additional FDA resources is far outweighed by the cost to carriers, exporters and importers. It makes no sense to penalize someone who is trying to relieve border congestion by travelling at off peak times.”

While the CTA and the Ontario Trucking Association led the charge on this issue, they had many allies in conveying their message to Washington, including: the Canadian Consulate in Buffalo; the Canadian Embassy in Washington; Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development
and Trade; Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food; the Attorney General’s Office for New York State; and the American Trucking Associations.