On January 10, 2016, Ontario’s newly constructed Nipigon River Bridge split. The bridge, which connects Eastern and Western Canada, is vital to the health of the country’s commercial transportation network. While a portion of the bridge was reopened on January 12, 2016, for passenger vehicles and regular-weight transport trucks, officials were unable to say how long it might take to repair the bridge to accommodate oversized trucks.

Resulting from the bridge failure, transport traffic in the area has backed up; roughly 1,300 trucks cross over that stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway each day, carrying $100 million worth of food, mail, machinery and other goods, according to 2012 figures provided by the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

Presently, the only option for transport truckers crossing Northern Ontario is to detour through the US. That detour has proven increasingly difficult as security regulations increased after the Sept. 11 attacks, resulting in the majority of domestic shipments driving through Canada, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Trucking Alliance said Monday.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is currently working with the trucking industry to develop temporary solutions to ease the strain on domestic transport. Deringer will continue to monitor and report on the situation in Ontario. If you have any questions, please send an email to marketing@anderinger.com.