Is it just my interpretation, or are we seeing a greater frequency of accidents involving commercial truckers?

On a recent trip south there were semis in the ditch – the one jus south of Hinton which had a demolished cab hanging out onto part of the highway with the trailer still hooked up and reclining at a sharp angle onto the steep bank on the side of the road.

Another, a flatbed carrying lumber, had just driven down a less steep embankment to come to rest on a level piece of ground about 10 metres below the level of the highway.

Then there was the recent one on Massey in town. Don’t typically see semis on Massey,but could have been delivering to the retail stores in that area. Not a normal through truck route, I assume, other than local delivery.

I find the trucks I am encountering on the highways are travelling at and mostly above the speed limit, even as fast as 110-120kph.

Gus what you may be noticing is a dramatic increase in the number of southern trucks in this region right now.

With the explosion in lumber prices combined with the mine construction and exploration there are not enough local trucks to handle the loads, and as always, CN Rail cant increase handling so we are getting allot of southern trucks up here who just cant handle the weather as well as the local trucks.

A lot of it has to do with the caliber of people getting a class 1 these days . I have been a professional driver since 1990 in one capacity or another ranging from 1 ton flat decks all the way to super b trains . In my years over the road I have seen the quality of driver decline drastically . 3 years ago I finally hung up my keys for good . Problem is with such a high demand for commercial drivers , the skill and quality of new drivers has gone downhill . There are thousands of good skilled drivers on our roads today , but there are just as many who have no business behind the wheel of a tractor trailer unit . I find because of this a lot of good drivers are moving on .

In my travels across the province this last year that truck drivers are not as professional as they used to be. Hopefully better quality drivers will enter the industry soon.

used to be you had to have learned skill to drive a truck, now just an EI sponsored course and away you go, they even put automatic transmissions and automatic slack adjusters in so all you have to know now is how to put your foot to the floor. The pay sucks when you look at the hours your required to work, there’s no 8 hour days in trucking.

used to be you had to have learned skill to drive a truck, now just an EI sponsored course and away you go, they even put automatic transmissions and automatic slack adjusters in so all you have to know now is how to put your foot to the floor. The pay sucks when you look at the hours your required to work, there’s no 8 hour days in trucking.