New Ontario trucks exempted from Drive Clean testing

TORONTO — Ontario trucks four years old or newer will no longer have to undergo environmental Drive Clean testing, the province’s Environment Minister Laurel Broten announced at the Ontario Trucking Association convention last week.

The OTA, which for years has been lobbying for Drive Clean reforms for newer, cleaner trucks, applauded the move. It has argued that it was costly and pointless to require newer trucks to undergo annual or bi-annual testing.

Last year, the OTA won a small victory when it got the MOE to exempt trucks that passed a 20 percent opacity standard from annual testing.

“The MOE is responding appropriately to the fact that the average pass rate for heavy trucks five years or newer is 98 percent — even with the toughest opacity test in North America,” said David Bradley, president of OTA. “Current vintage trucks are much cleaner than they were even just ten years ago.”

The OTA estimates that the changes will save the trucking industry about $5 million a year in costs.

The OTA adds that further changes are possible in 2006. “By next year, the new generation of smog-free trucks will come on the market and the Drive Clean program will need to take account of this new reality,” said Bradley. “We will be suggesting further refinements to the program during the next round of consultations, for example to see if the testing exemption for the new smog-free engines can be stretched further.”

Bradley said OTA will be looking to finally resolve the current competitive gap that exists between Ontario-based vehicles which must undergo periodic testing and out-of-province vehicles which don’t: “This has never made much sense to us from either a competitiveness or an environmental point of view,” he said, adding that on any given day 30 percent of all the heavy trucks operating on Ontario highways are from outside of the province.

Dale Holman, a five-truck operator in Georgetown, Ont. says the change will benefit small carriers and owner-ops the most. “With fuel, insurance and other costs on the rise, I cannot afford to take my trucks out of service and then pay for a test when I know they are going to pass with flying colors. It’s about time this change was made,” he said in an OTA press release.

Although there might be some push-back from some of the private testing facilities who fear a loss in business levels, OTA points out that rates charged to test trucks were not capped as they were for cars, but were set by the market, from the very beginning.

“Anyone who operated a testing facility for the last seven years was able to do so charging whatever the market would bear.” Bradley said. “If they have not gotten a return on their initial investment by now, then perhaps they did not make the right business decisions.”