Canada’s ten provinces and three te

Canada’s ten provinces and three territories allowed significant no-uniform increases in allowable gross weight in the early 1970s, and their diverse regulations quickly became barriers to internal trade. The provinces therefore established a committee to address the issue. The committee identified roads and bridges that would need to be strengthened to allow for trucks at higher weights on all major highways. The necessary strengthening of the infrastructure was accomplished by the early 1980s. Some of the regulations in this early period led to vehicle configurations with large and undesirable impacts on roads and bridges and/or poor dynamic performance. The committee undertook the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators/ Roads and Transportation Association of Canada (CCMTA/RTAC) Vehicle Weights and Dimensions Study, a major research study to identify vehicle configurations suitable for the desired weights that had both minimal impact on infrastructure and satisfactory dynamic performance. The research was completed in 1986 and produced a set of principles for configuration of vehicles. The committee used these principles to develop a national Memorandum of Understanding on Vehicle Weights and Dimensions (“the M.o.U.”). All provinces agreed to allow the vehicle configurations defined in the M.o.U. on a set of highways defined by each province with weights and dimensions that would not infringe on the limits in the M.o.U. The provinces implemented the M.o.U. in 1989,