wire:
If Flat mat gets stressed out by the sight of turnpike doubles he is going to be apoplectic when he sees the cover of this months Truck news (truck west) . Lol.
There is a picture relating to the article on Loblaws new turnpike triples. Bloody hell! Three 53’ trailers configured in a roadtrain.
Even the Australians don’t make roadtrains using individual trailers as long as 53’ each. Imagine the potential chaos that could be created by one of their drivers pulling into the Husky in Regina with one of them! Ha ha.
As for Carryfast. Well of course a turnpike double is a more efficient way of moving freight than a standard semi and i should imagine that the big companies such as Bison, Trans X, etc think they are the best thing to happen to the trucking industry in decades but that doesn’t mean they are good for most people. The drivers aren’t exactly getting a good deal at an extra 10c a mile, are they? I wonder why they do it to be honest.
The first company to start using them probably found that they could almost double their revenue by pulling double the freight for a relatively small extra cost but that didn’t last long. Inevitably lots of other companies got wise and the freight rates came down to match the lower costs.
But what if you aren’t a turnpike double and you don’t have lower costs but you still need a load across Western Canada to get you home? What if, like us you haul down to the Southern US and back up to Western Canada and need to finish off the triangle with a load from say Calgary? You can’t turn into a turnpike double and haul home 2 x half priced loads for the price of one and compete with the big boys can you? So you either have to do a single load for Diesel money or come back 1400kms empty. In my opinion the whole scenario stinks to be fair. 
Blimey wire this is an old ongoing discussion across loads of different topics.The fact is that transport is always going to be a competitive industry wherever it is.However why is it that there’s so much bad feeling towards trying to make road transport as competitive as possible against other modes because that’s where the issues are.
Where’s the sense in complaining about doubles operators trying to make the job pay and keep freight on the road while not looking at the issue of intermodal which surely adds more to the problems of over capacity than A trains,which have been running over there for years,would.
It’s a positive thing that road transport there at least has some chance to offer a long distance service,using the economies of scale,that doubles and maybe even triples outfits can provide.Which might just keep more freight on the road instead of being in the position of operators maybe having to give up altogether on hauling freight over long distances where there’s an intermodal choice and in which the road option would probably become unviable in the medium to longer term if just limited to single trailer outfits anyway 
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In which case you’d probably end up with being stuck with North/South traffic and lose a lot of the East/West traffic eventually anyway unless you can get the outfit enabled to at least be able to haul another trailer in the medium term future so as to remain competitive not only with other road operators but more importantly intermodal East/West rail freight carriers and it’s that which probably explains the (correct) increase in the adoption of the idea of multi trailer outfits among haulage firms 
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Although having said that even the viability of North/South traffic by road might also become more dependent on the possibility of being able to haul multiple trailer loads in the long term according to the services offered by the intermodal rail freight carriers .
cpr.ca/en/ship-with-cp/how-y … fault.aspx
Although admittedly triples outfits made up of 53 foot trailers does seem like a bit of a liability 
although it would be interesting to see how that idea works out in practice and as 53 foot seems to be the common length for trailers over there they probably haven’t got the choice in making that type of outfit up of lesser length trailers and still offering the customers the required service levels .
It’s the issue of long haul sector of the road transport industry,trying to remain competitive in an environment of increasing moves towards intermodal freight transport throughout North America,in the long term,that seems to me to be the most logical reason to explain the issue.As such I would have thought that it’s in the interests of drivers to co operate with that idea not complain about it .
I don’t get stressed by them at all,just ■■■■■■ with the number of them running around nowadays and the fact that when you get a few parked together at a gas station,or similar,it makes it nearly impossible to park.Just look down TC1,Virden,Grenfell,Tomkins and Maple Creek,full of the buggers.
