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John G Smith
John G. Smith is the editorial director of Newcom Media's trucking and supply chain publications -- including Today's Trucking, trucknews.com, TruckTech, Transport Routier, and Road Today. The award-winning journalist has covered the trucking industry since 1995.
Want a trouble-free rental or lease? It’s in the details
Every piece of equipment comes at a price. Look no further than your accounts -payable department or the bank account for proof. But decisions around renting, leasing or financing involve far more than payment values alone. Those who work with unique equipment spec's or hold onto trucks and trailers for extended periods of time are prime candidates for purchase financing. Every year of service after an asset has fully depreciated is a bonus. Leasing tends to be the strategy of choice for those with shorter trade-in cycles or other plans for business capital. Then there are the rentals to address seasonal or short-term surges in freight volumes, or even temporary storage.
Ministers discuss ELDs, systems to protect road users
TORONTO, ON - Canada's transportation ministers met in Toronto today, discussing a broad array of initiatives such as the mandating of Electronic Logging Devices and the need to study truck-mounted systems like side guards that could better protect "vulnerable" road users. The ministers have also agreed to create a task force to harmonize truck-related regulations "wherever possible", said Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau. Unspecified changes to the Memorandum of Understanding that governs weights and dimensions were also agreed to in principle.
Ontario aggregate haulers ending protest
MILTON, ON - Aggregate haulers who have been occupying Ontario Ministry of Transportation scales and the routes to Toronto-area gravel pits since Tuesday are ending their protest with the promise that a hard line on axle weights is -- at least temporarily -- coming to an end. "The strike is over now," Jagroop Singh Bangli, one of the key organizers of the strike action, told Today's Trucking.
Gravel haulers protest axle weight crackdown
MILTON, ON - A longstanding dispute around allowable axle weights has boiled to the surface, with dozens of aggregate haulers occupying three Ontario Ministry of Transportation scales in the Toronto area. The protesters began parking their equipment at 2 a.m. on September 20 in the facility adjacent to the eastbound lanes of Highway 401 near Trafalgar Road in Milton, Ontario. They returned on Wednesday and pledged to expand the protest at nearby quarries. Some had already been protesting around sites in Aberfoyle and Dundas, Ontario. "We just want a solution," said Jagroop Singh Bangli, a two-truck owner-operator who was involved in organizing the fight, as he divided his peers into teams for the next stage of the protest. "We don't want to take any more tickets."
