Moncton and Beyond…

In particular, the Board would like to get your thoughts on adding an e-commerce element that would make paying membership dues, ordering programs and labels, and registering for the annual conference and various workshops, much easier and quicker. It would also streamline our internal systems and save staff a lot of time and effort. In addition, there is a lower likelihood of errors being made due to transcribing mistakes when taking information from faxed forms and inputting the information into our database.

We would also like your thoughts on any other content, such as blogs and FAQs, that you may wish to see. Also, we are hope to include most of our content in both French and English as we move forward.

Please take a moment and drop me a quick note at the link below to give me your thoughts.

GHG/Fuel Economy, ESC and Shorter Stopping Distances

On the lobbying front we continue to represent the interests of the CTEA in Ottawa. The new Greenhouse Gas/Fuel Economy Standards proposed in the US and being worked on by Environment Canada and Transport Canada may have an effect on truck up-fitters, so we have been busy ensuring that the government is aware of our concerns. The current US language would appear to require low rolling resistance tires for vocational trucks, but this may not be realistic in many on/off highway applications. This may be particularly detrimental to our members who regularly add axles and tires to vehicles — and who do not have the opportunity to bank and trade environmental credits like the “big guys." We’ll keep you posted as this issue takes shape.

Just for your information, mandatory Electronic Stability Control is being considered in the US by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with a plan to publish a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in December 2011. If this goes through, we anticipate that Transport Canada will follow quickly with a similar or the same rule. Again we’ll keep you posted on developments.

The NHTSA has also advised that sometime in 2013, they intend to have an NPRM out to reduce the stopping distance for straight trucks by as much as 30%. We’ll keep you in the loop on this one, too.

RIG and Cab Crush

Trailer rear impact guards and truck cab crush standards are a couple of other regulatory related issues being talked about south of the border. Either one may or may not have an effect in the “Great White North." In both cases, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has submitted petitions to NHTSA to introduce new or enhanced regulations. They seem to be pushing the NHTSA to at least adopt the stiffer Canadian RIG, and want a cab structural integrity test protocol adopted to enhance safety for truck drivers under rollover conditions.

An upgrade of the US RIG standard to match the Canadian CMVSS 223 would be no big deal to our trailer manufacturer members, but IIHS has commented that they don’t think that any RIG is strong enough at the outboard ends. We’ll see what NHTSA has to say.

A cab structural-integrity rule won’t affect many of our members, but for those few that modify cabs or build from the ground up it may have a huge testing cost impact, so we’ll be watching this closely.

NHTSA plans to comment on both of these petitions in December.

BC’s latest VW&D Rule

This is a quick one since I’m just going to give you a link here to download the BC Government’s circular.