Truckers driving vehicles more than 10 years old will not be banned from the Port of Vancouver next month as originally planned.
The Rolling Truck Age Program aims to help the port meet its climate targets, and was planned to take effect on February 1. However, this decision caused a furious backlash from the trucking industry.
As Vancouver Fraser Port Authority vice president Duncan Wilson, said in a statement:
We have recently heard some concerns about our program start date from industry and Transport Canada, and we recognize that the pandemic, recent flooding, and on-going global supply chain issues may have created some short-term challenges for people looking to buy compliant trucks
For this reason, the port authority decided to postpone the program start date slightly, to provide some additional time and engagement opportunities for industry, and mitigate some of those challenges.
Furthermore, according to the port, limiting access to vehicles 10 years old or younger would have cut particle emissions from the fleet by 93%. In addition, 80% of vehicles serving the port were already compliant with the policy.
On the other hand, truckers noted that the high cost and limited availability of newer vehicles would have left many of them unable to upgrade, and thus either out of a job or unable to work the port.
In fact, with 20% of trucks still non-compliant and little opportunity to upgrade, Unifor said the policy would have caused a loss of hundreds of trucks servicing the port.
