TORONTO — Wandering amidst more than 300 exhibitors spread around 300,000 square feet of exhibition space, visitors to last week’s Truck World 2010 show seemed like a pretty happy bunch. There was an upbeat buzz in the air.

Held at the International Centre near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on April 15th through the 17th, Truck World 2010 featured several new and useful elements, including the inaugural Vocational Truck & Equipment Expo, endorsed by the Canadian Transportation Equipment Association, which declared it a solid success.

The show’s seminar program began later that afternoon with a session produced by the CTEA. The infinitely knowledgeable Eddie Tschirhart led his audience through the difficult art of spec’ing vocational trucks in this era of endless rules and regs.

The next morning there was the Fleet Forum session called ‘Sleep Issues: the Coming Regulatory Regime.’ Given that drivers will soon be tested for sleep disorders in much the same way they’re now tested for drug and alcohol abuse, the seminar was timely.

Leading the four-member panel was Don Osterberg, senior vice president of safety, security and driver training at Schneider National in Green Bay, who manages what is arguably the continent’s biggest and best fleet sleep-disorder program. Other speakers were Dr. Barry Kurtzer of DriverCheck, Mark Seymour of Kriska Transportation, and Ken Armstrong, a senior driver for Swift Transportation who has been something of a pioneer in the process of treating sleep apnea in truck drivers.

Osterberg made the 125 audience members gasp when he said that Schneider reduced its health care costs by more than US$700 per driver per month after screening all its drivers — in 2006 — for sleep disorders and arranging treatment for those who needed help.

Two other seminars were held on Saturday the 17th for owner-operators and drivers, both led by writer and former highwaySTAR editor Jim Park.

THE PRODUCT SCENE

There was no shortage of new hardware at Truck World, with several products being shown for the first time anywhere.

Not seen before in Canada were the new Peterbilt 587, the Kenworth T700, and the International ProStar Plus, as well as the new Mack mDrive automated transmission and all the new 2010 engines. DEF suppliers like Brenntag were in abundance as well, of course.

ArvinMeritor’s all-new Meritor 14X tandem drive axle, ready for delivery in June, attracted much attention.

There were three new tires first shown at the Mid-America show in March, like the new and extremely fuel-efficient X One XDA Energy tire from Michelin. Hankook Tire Canada showed off its new long-haul drive tire, the DL07, sporting extra deep tread depth of 31/32nd in. And a new, low rolling resistance version of Continental’s deep-lug drive tire, the HDL2 DL Eco Plus, was also on display.

Innovative Trailer Design Industries of Mississauga, Ont. showed a prototype, streamlined 53-ft tridem container chassis that’s predicted to improve fuel efficiency by a whopping 10 to 15 percent. It has side skirts to reduce aerodynamic drag – a first in the North American intermodal industry — and uses wide-base single tires. The chassis weighs about 9,700 lb, compared with 11,500 lb for a conventional type.

Truck World will re-appear in Toronto in April 2012. In the meantime, the next Newcom show, CamExpo, is slotted into Quebec City this coming November. And in April of 2011, ExpoCam returns to Montreal.