Experts will peg trucking’s future

WINNIPEG — Want to know what your business will be like five, 10 or 40 years from now? You just might find your answer in Winnipeg.

Since 1966, a group of academics, engineers and industry types have been meeting and talking about the past, present and future of the transportation industry under the banner Manitoba Transport Institute (MTI).

Now, the institute, which is linked closely to the University of Manitoba’s Department of Supply Chain Management in the I.H. Asper School of Business, is reaching out and inviting industry professionals from all over the continent to a special 2.5-day event called the “Future of Trucking Symposium,” scheduled for February 17 and 19.

The first evening’s the welcome reception, MTI Director Paul Larson tells todaystrucking.com. "The real work will get done on the 18th and 19th."

The symposium will focus on what Larson refers to as the three pillars of the transportation industry: Vehicle technology, roadway infrastructure and public policy. Larson plans on having representatives from the Rocky Mountain Institute, Transport Canada, American trucking safety administrators; provincial ministries of transport as well as innovators such as Shore Power technologies.

"We welcome academics but the real target is the trucking firms; they’re the ones this is aimed at," he says, adding that anyone interested should check in on the website from time to time as details get firmed up.