Water works

If you’re a long-haul trucker on your way to Newfoundland, you’ve got a problem. It’s a 215-kilometre-wide interruption in the pavement called the Atlantic Ocean. And because it’s there, it’s not easy to get your goods to Canada’s youngest province. After you’ve wound your way across the continent and up through Cape Breton, you’ll arrive (finally!) at the Nova Scotia town of North Sydney. There, you drop your load so it can be ferried across to Port aux Basques, Nfld., whence it hits the highway again. The trip across the water costs about $350 and takes upwards of six hours. On a very good day. On a bad day, after you’ve made North Sydney, you might find yourself stranded: by ice or Atlantic storms, sometimes for days at a time.

Either way, shipping to Newfoundland is expensive and unpredictable.

You haven’t much choice. You could send your trucks and trailers out through Halifax, aboard one of Oceanex Shipping’s liners. But for roll-on/roll-off freight ferrying, you’re stuck with North Sydney and Marine Atlantic, the Crown-supported ferry operator. You and everyone else, that is. Marine Atlantic puts through upwards of 35,000 trailers a year at North Sydney.

Brian Ritchie wants a piece of that action. He’s president of Shediac, N.B.-based Rigel Shipping, a 16-vessel firm with extensive experience shipping petroleum products. Rigel plans to commit about $20 million to an ice-class roll-on/roll-off vessel with a capacity of 120 to 150 trailers. The boat would cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Belledune, N.B., near Shediac, to Corner Brook, Nfld., twice weekly. The trip would take 20 hours one way.
Even though Rigel’s cost-per-trip and on-ship time would be higher than Marine Atlantic’s, Ritchie maintains that Newfoundland-bound truckers would benefit from the “time saved in not driving.”

While his plan exists only on paper at the moment–the Rigel ferry might not hit the water for another six months–Brian Ritchie can almost hear the ferry engines fire up. Good thing he’s keen, too, because there are lots of folks who don’t believe Rigel can compete prow-to-prow with Marine Atlantic.

Ritchie actually started working on the project in November 2001, after the port authority in Belledune approached and asked if he would consider the service. Ritchie hadn’t any experience in ferry service but agreed to try.

After all, the idea makes sense. If a trucker could cut a full day off a trip, he’d jump at the chance. The problem is, at first glance, Ritchie’s proposal doesn’t appear to be a money saver. Marine Atlantic charges between $300 and $400 to ship a trailer from Port Sydney. Rigel would charge about $550.

But here’s the thing. When a truck enters New Brunswick with freight bound for Newfoundland, the truck has to go through New Brunswick and across Nova Scotia down to the port at North Sydney. Ritchie thinks traffic should veer off at Moncton and make the short trip northeast to Belledune.

Driving time from St. Leonard to North Sydney is approximately 10 hours, while it’s less than half that from St. Leonard to Belledune. “That’s about 43 per cent off their existing costs between St. Leonard and Corner Brook,” Ritchie says. If truckers choose Belledune, he figures they’ll knock about $700 off their travel costs.

Will it work? Steve Snow, a spokesman for Oceanex, says his company was approached by the Port of Belledune back in 1997. “We deemed it non-economical,” he says, “any way we looked at it.”

Such skepticism isn’t stopping Ritchie. Neither is the fact that several potential customers aren’t ready to jump aboard. Gordon Peddle is president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Carriers Association, which represents most of the island’s major carriers. He says it’s too early to say if his members would use the service. “We are living on an island,” Peddle says, “so the more options we have to get to and from the island, the better. But we will have to wait and see.”

Peddle also owns DD Transport, which has about 50 trucks. The company is an open-deck commodity mover, so putting trucks and trailers on a ferry is a big expense. He wonders whether anyone hauling perishables would use the service. Reefer companies want drivers to stay with their trailers, for management purposes, but the Rigel vessel won’t accommodate passengers.

The executive director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association is Ralph Boyd. He says some of the region’s biggest trucking companies–Day & Ross, Midland Transport, Armour Transportation–and others have “been very cautious about committing to this sort of service.” Boyd says it makes sense for some cargo from Montreal and points west to go across northern New Brunswick to Belledune, but he wonders about goods now consolidated in Moncton and going through North Sydney. “You have to look at volumes,” Boyd says, adding, “What would be available for backhaul from Belledune?”
Then there’s the security issue. Will unattended trailers be sitting ducks for theft? Not under Ritchie’s watch. He assures carriers there will be secured marshalling yards at both ends of the trip.

Ritchie has strong support from other corners. Sean Copper is spokesman for the Atlantic Provinces Chamber of Commerce and is optimistic about the service. Copper thinks it may serve a secondary purpose. “If this becomes the prevalent link, then the highways in northern New Brunswick will have to be improved,” he says. “I kind of think it’s a two-fold thing. Let’s put this extra service on and maybe we will get the roads done.”

There’s one final reef to navigate: Ritchie’s scheme will work only if the ports charge lower rates. This has already happened in Belledune, where a local authority assumed control of the port. Until locals in Corner Brook can persuade Ottawa that they can run the operation and therefore negotiate new tariffs, Ritchie’s dream is on hold. His first request for new tariffs in Corner Brook was turned down. Transport Canada spokesman Maurice Landry in Moncton says the tariffs are set under a national program and therefore cannot be changed for one port. Transport Canada will do what it can to assist Rigel, he says. Anything, that is, short of negotiating individual rates.

The Corner Brook Port Corp. has been gathering local support to take over the port and is ready to begin negotiations with Transport Canada. A big part of those talks will be about money and whether or not Corner Brook will get transition funds from the federal government to make any necessary improvements to the dock and terminal. It is not known how long the negotiations will take but once the transfer is complete, Rigel can start its own tariff talks with the port.

Ritchie had expected the Corner Brook port to be independent by the middle of 2002. He says if the divestiture is complete by September, his new service could begin this year. But if things aren’t in place until October or later, he won’t start in the winter because volumes will be low and the weather is bad. Then again, like any good Maritimer, Brian Ritchie’s not about to let a little miserable weather get in his way.

Tom Peters is a transportation writer based
in Halifax.