Peel tow truck operators conflicted about new provincial towing policies

[TowNews]

Mississauga owner says Designated Towing Zone pilot project unfair to

smaller towing companies, driving up prices, slowing response times.

 

Sitting in his office in Mississauga, Tony Pento picked up the phone and called 411.

 

The owner of Atlantic Collision Group told the operator that he was looking for the wait time for a vehicle disabled on Hwy. 401, near the airport.

 

That would be 30 minutes, the operator told him.

 

Pento runs a tow truck company and auto body shop on Atlantic Avenue in Mississauga and said that he’s concerned about the wait times under the new restricted towing zones pilot program.

 

The program only allows companies who bid on a tender for the project to attend to vehicles along the 401 through Mississauga, as well as a number of other 400-series highways in the GTA.

 

“A lot of companies didn’t get the tenders,” Pento said, explaining that tow truck drivers who have serviced the highway for 40 years or more didn’t qualify. “This is going to take their livelihood away.”

 

He worries that when traffic levels return to normal after the pandemic, this handful of companies won’t be able to keep up with the demand for service on major highways in the GTA.

 

"Under the leadership of Premier Ford, we’ve been clear that our government would step in to improve provincial oversight and shut down criminal activity in the towing industry, and that’s exactly what were doing," said Dakota Brasier, spokesperson and press secretary for Caroline Mulroney, Minister of Transportation. "We launched a four-year tow-zone pilot program, that introduced restricted towing zones on select sections of provincial highways in the GTA."

 

The province has an established fee schedule for light duty to heavy tow trucks, ranging from $225 an hour up to $850.

 

"This pilot will help protect people, make our roads safer, and cut down on the massive costs of gridlock that plague Ontario’s highways," Brasier said.

 

Pento, who also sits on the City of Mississauga’s Towing Industry Advisory Committee is also concerned about a new oversight program that the provincial government is establishing for the towing industry.

 

The Towing and Storage Safety Enforcement Act (TSSEA) is a proposed regulation that would be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2023.

 

The program is being developed in response to issues pertaining to fraud, violent crime, safety and customer protections, as well as make a level playing field for tow truck drivers in the industry.

 

Mississauga Coun. Carolyn Parrish said this policy was modelled in part from the Mississauga bylaws, which have been regulating the local industry since 2008.

 

Since its inception, the program has removed 90 tow truck drivers from operation for having criminal records and reduced 30 other plates to cool competition in the area.

 

“We thought they’d take us as a model,” Parrish said, talking about how provincial staff asked for Mississauga’s participation in consultation on the TSSEA. “We’re not thrilled with it because we’d like to have the local control.”

For Joey Gagne, CEO of Abrams Towing, the provincial regulations would make it much easier administratively for him as an operator in a number of Ontario municipalities, including Brampton and Mississauga.

 

Instead of getting plates and approvals for trucks in each municipality he serves, he would go through the Ontario government.

 

“Everybody should be talking from the same playbook,” he said, noting that he feels it would be fair for all tow truck operators to be following the same regulations.

 

Up in Caledon, Mayor Allan Thompson asked OPP detachment commander Mike Garant about how the proposed policy impacts his team.

 

Garant said that the town should be proud of their own individual oversight of tow truck drivers, and that former Caledon OPP officers were involved in the development of the TSSEA.

 

The town of Caledon is changing their own regulations to cap the daily fee for storage of a vehicle at impound lots to $60 a day, after finding that other companies in the GTA were bringing vehicles north in order to charge a higher daily fee.

 

“There’s many similarities to the Caledon bylaw,” Garant said. “They don’t contradict each other.”

 

Ron Lilly runs Git R Done Towing in Caledon and agrees.

 

“In the long run it’s going to be good,” he said, but took issue with the restricted towing zones pilot.

 

“It’s kind of discouraging that I can’t go down and get my own customer off the highway,” he said. “Customer requests should be allowed.”

 

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: After concerns were raised about the new provincial towing industry policies at a recent Peel regional council meeting, we wanted to look into how tow truck operators were affected by the new policies.

 

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