TORONTO — Ontario’s long-combination vehicle (LCV) pilot program is such a success it’s probably going to get bigger.

In its first year of operating, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) agreed to issue 100 operating permits to 50 carriers. They could get two each.

According to Ron Madill, the coordinator of vehicle weights and dimensions at MTO, the Ontario Trucking Association, which is coordinating the LCV program, has recommended that next year, the number of carriers be raised to 80 with four LCV units each.

"We [MTO] are not going to just open the barn doors and let this program go; it’ll be gradual," Madill told the recent annual meeting of the Canadian Transportation Equipment Association (CTEA), which is made up of body builders, upfitters and other equipment manufacturers.

Ontario’s program expires at the end of November (after one extension, already) but Madill says the longer vehicles will most likely be re-appearing on the highways come spring time.

Madill said that the 39 carriers who have participated so far in Ontario have logged 19,000 trips and six million “relatively incident-free” kilometers.

It sounds like a lot but, Madill noted, “it’s really a drop in the bucket. It’s about one tenth of one percent of the total miles traveled in Ontario in a year.”

There are 36 approved points of origin in 11 different municipalities and he said that the 23 new service centers along the 401 will all be LCV-friendly.