WHITBY, Ont. — Chevron’s popular Delo Truck is making the rounds through Ontario and Quebec this week and next, stopping at ‘First Source’ marketers and bringing a mobile learning centre to customers.

The Delo truck concludes the Ontario leg of its tour today at Performance Equipment in Mississauga, before setting out for Quebec where it will make another seven stops.

Trucknews.com caught up with the tour at RP Oil in Whitby, Ont.

Bob Meachen, president of Chevron Lubricants Canada, was on-hand at the event, greeting customers and providing tours of the impressive high-tech trailer.

“It has been a few years (since the trailer visited Canada),” he said. “This is the new truck. It’s newly designed, it has a lot of on-board modules and it’s an educational platform as well as being a banner for the Delo brand. Most of the people you see here today are customers of our marketer, end users who use the product and they’re obviously Delo fans or they wouldn’t be here.”

A walk through the trailer provides visitors with a history of the Delo brand as well as the rare opportunity to see the effects good – and not-so-good – oil have on the parts within an engine.

“What we’re trying to get people to understand is the technology that makes this more than just oil,” Meachen said. “The advanced technology and additives used in our products certainly bring advantages and benefits you can’t see just by dropping oil in the engine.”

The Delo Truck tour was also brought to Canada to reward the company’s top distributors. Chevron’s First Source marketers are those that meet certain “standards of excellence” set out by Chevron.

“To be classed as First Source, there’s a whole host of different criteria they have to meet,” Meachen explained. Distributors are graded on factors such as: volumetrics; handling; sales; product integrity; and compliance with Chevron’s own rules and regulations.

The Delo trailer was first launched in 1999 and while previous versions have come to Canada, this is the first visit the latest rendition has made up north. When set up in exhibit mode, it measures 6.8 metres wide and features 19 information stations. It is hauled by a specialty transport company out of Michigan called Select1. Tour driver Ron Fyffe told Trucknews.com there was one complication when bringing the show to Canada: the fancy new colour-coordinated Kenworth T700 used to pull the trailer doesn’t comply with Quebec’s wheelbase requirements and had to be left behind in the US.

“We couldn’t get the permits to take it into Quebec,” he said.

The trailer is being pulled by a black T660 that was already equipped with all the required accessorial equipment, such as a generator to power the trailer.

With the Ontario leg of the tour concluding today, the truck will move onto Quebec where it can be visited at: Camion Ste Marie, St Hyacinthe, Apr. 16; Excellence Peterbilt, Sainte-Julie, Apr. 17; Lubrifiant Saint Laurent, Longueuil, QC, Apr. 19; ADF Diesel Candiac, Candiac, QC, Apr. 20; Lubrifiant Saint Laurent, Rimouski, QC, Apr. 23; Les Petroles MB, Baie-Comeau, QC, Apr. 25; and STL Lubrifiants, Saint-Prime, QC, Apr. 26.