More than 100 container truck drivers from the Lower Mainland held a rolling convoy from Delta, B.C., to a Vancouver port on May 5, to protest against the new container trucking service requirements that they believe will harm smaller and medium drayage companies in the area.

To renew their truck tags (licences to haul containers to and from the port) this November, licensees “must not enter into an agreement, arrangement or understanding” to perform on- or off-dock trucking services with any non-licence holders, who perform off-dock drayage work in the Lower Mainland. That is according to a report published by the Office of the British Columbia Container Trucking Commissioner (OBCCTC) on May 2. There are currently approximately 1,600 issued tags, distributed among 74 trucking companies.

Commissioner Glen MacInnes says the decision is aimed at closing loopholes for “shadow companies” in Lower Mainland that allowed them to bypass regulated wage standards for truck drivers hauling the port’s containers. 

Historically, he says, a licensed trucking company could transfer a container at an off-dock facility to a non-licensee, which would complete the delivery without having to pay drivers the regulated rate. Changes were introduced in 2022. 

“Then, what we were finding was [that] some licensees would arrange it the other way around, where they made the non-licensee the primary shipper and then contracted that back to the licensee. So, it was a bit of a loophole that didn’t achieve what we wanted.” 

Tom Johnson, spokesperson for the Port Transportation Association, which organized the Sunday rally, says the requirement will do more harm than good, by pushing small and mid-sized companies that have non-licensed parts of their businesses — including longhaul trucking operations — out of the business and out of the province. 

“We are going to have the highest-paid unemployed drivers in Canada,” Johnson says.