Close to 200 truck drivers making their way through the Fountain Street South roundabout in Cambridge had to make an extra stop this week.
Waterloo regional police and partner police services from OPP, Guelph, Brantford, Peel and Halton joined the Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Finance for a two-day commercial vehicle inspection blitz at Conestoga College's Cambridge campus Wednesday and Thursday.
Const. James Hartung, who was coordinating the blitz, said they inspected about 77 vehicles on the first day and about 30 per cent were taken out of service for a variety of infractions.
"That's three out of every 10 vehicles we're inspecting are not allowed to leave here without repairing or changing something that needs to be done so they can continue," said Staff. Sgt. Scott Griffiths, adding there has been a constant flow of tow trucks through the parking lot over the last two days taking disabled vehicles out.
"It really yields some good results," he says. "We're seeing tires, we're seeing bad brakes, we're seeing broken suspension pieces, we're seeing drivers who are blowing three-day license suspensions for alcohol consumption. We're seeing drivers that are getting their license taken for three days for using drugs."
"We're finding defects in both the vehicles and we're finding defects in the paper work, and sometimes we're also finding defects in the drivers themselves."
In one inspection, two vice grips were found holding a vehicle's suspension in place.
"That's a creative use for them. It's definitely not one we would endorse and definitely not one that should be happening, but those are the types of things that we're finding," Griffiths says.
Griffiths says the annual June event is a concentrated effort from law enforcement from across the province to focus on commercial vehicle safety.
Waterloo regional police have five members who are certified to do the inspections through the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, which offers a five-week course.
It's meant to ensure that "whether it's a small landscaping truck with a trailer or a tractor trailer with a huge load on the back" that they leave safely and that they're doing all the required documentation as well as all the required checks on their vehicle to ensure it's safe to put on the road, he added.
Griffiths says despite internal checks done by some large trucking companies, a lot of those requirements still fall to the individual drivers.
Companies like Challenger have staff that perform regular checks of their vehicles before they hit the road, but it's not like that for every company and a lot of that responsibility is on the drivers, he said.
"Part of the key message to those drivers is you're responsible to put that vehicle on the road,"Griffiths says. "The company is responsible through charges and other actions through the MTO, but really, on a day to day basis, these drivers, for their own safety and for the safety of the people around them, are supposed to be keeping a keen eye on that."
A similar two-day blitz held last June at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium inspected 177 commercial motor vehicles, 73 of which were taken out of service and 10 plates were seized. Police laid 122 charges during that blitz.
No alcohol consumption infractions were found during last year's blitz, but two drivers tested positive for driving while using cannabis and were both issued Approved Drug Screening Equipment Suspensions.
The Ministry of Finance conducted 113 inspections at the 2022 event and laid one charge for operating with coloured fuel.
Griffiths says WRPS will provide the results from this week's blitz on Friday.
