CTEA tries to clear the confusion on rear-impact guards, modified chassis cabs

MONTREAL (Oct. 27, 1999) — A variety of proposed federal regulations affecting Canadian manufacturers of trucks, trailers, and associated systems were the subject of in-depth seminars at the 36th annual meeting and manufacturers’ conference of the Canadian Transportation Equipment Association, held last week Montreal. The theme was “The Challenge of Compliance.”

Among the topics discussed by the estimated 230 participants were the completion by a CTEA committee of a recommended generic design for a rear-impact guard for straight trucks or semi-trailers, developed with the assistance of the Ottawa-based National Research Council and its Centre for Surface Transportation Technology.

“The goal of this project was to provide a way to assist our members in certifying trailers they produce for export to the United States, and for various jurisdictions within Canada,” CTEA general manager Al Tucker explains. “Specifically, our design addresses the requirements of two recent U.S. federal motor vehicle safety standards: FMVSS-223 and -224, which talk about dimensional tolerances and minimal energy-absorption characteristics.”

Tucker adds that this research should also prove useful for the efforts of Transport Canada’s road-safety branch as it considers a similar standard for underride-protection devices for trucks and trailers operating on Canadian highways.

Another hot topic at the CTEA meeting was a proposed Canadian regulation on “incomplete vehicles” (i.e., chassis cabs that are significantly modified by dealers, body shops, or other garages after delivery from the OEM to accommodate additional axles, frame increases/decreases, etc.). The concern revolves about this regulationÕs demand that all subsequent modifiers of the vehicle — “subsequent-stage manufacturers”, as they’re known — be in a position to affix a National Safety Mark compliance label on the vehicle to confirm that the vehicle still meets all the original mechanical- and road-safety criteria, and to provide information as to what the new gross-vehicle and gross-axle weight ratings are, if these have been altered.

“Our concern as an association is that this proposed regulation has the potential to impose very costly re-testing and re-certification requirements on many of our members,” Tucker explains. “We certainly support accountability and demonstrated safety compliance, but to have the intermediate- and final-stage manufacturers responsible for the re-certification process, without first establishing the standards by which this can be accomplished, could present an unfair burden.”

The CTEA’s Truck Chassis Engineering Advisory Committee will now solicit member input and present the associationÕs concerns and suggestions to the federal transportation department during the draft regulationÕs 90-day response period, which expires in mid-December.

A federal-government source notes that, once all responses have been submitted, they will be assessed by Transport Canada and alternations made to the original proposal as the department deems appropriate. The proposal would then have to go before the House of Commons — or at least Cabinet, if an order-in-council is involved — and changes could occur there, too. Then, once it’s officially registered by the Clerk of the Privy Council, there would be a one-year hiatus before the regulation went into effect.

“The bottom line is, this regulation still has a considerable amount of review and potential modification to go through, and its provisions will not be in effect for some time yet,” the official notes. “There’s still adequate opportunity to ensure that its provisions are feasible for the industry to comply with.”

For more information, contact CTEA at 519/631-0414.