'There was no old standard': Mandatory truck-driving training to take effect next year

New commercial truck drivers in Ontario will have to take an approved entry-level training program before they can take the test for a Class A licence, starting July 1, 2017.

The new requirements would mean drivers will receive four to six weeks of training with fees set by private career colleges approved to provide the service, provincial transport minister Steven DelDucaannounced Tuesday. The training will consist of both classroom time and on-the-road training and must be completed before drivers can take their Class A commercial truck licensing test.

The announcement is good news to Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada.

"Basically there was no old standard. That's what the problem was," he told CBC News.

"If I had a Class A licence, I could sit in the passenger's seat;if you had a full G licence you could sit in the driver's seat, and I could take you out and try to teach you how to drive a truck," he says.

Del Duca says the new, province-wide standards for trucker training were developed with industry representatives and road safety experts, and will be made public next week.

He says the training will ensure all new commercial drivers have a consistent skill set to handle a big rig safely, and will eliminate unregistered trucking schools.

The Ontario Trucking Association has for years been lobbying the province changes.

"In the old days, it was 'Thou shallbe able to back up,' which really doesn't provide a whole lot of direction in terms of what backing manoeuvre," the association's CEO David Bradley said Tuesday.

Word that Ontario will become the first province to introduce mandatory entry-level training for truckers follows a 12-vehicle pileup Friday on Highway 400 near Highway 401 in Toronto, which claimed four lives, and involved three transport trucks.

Del Duca says the number of fatalities in large truck collisions fell 40 per cent in the last 10 years, even though the number of large trucks registered in Ontario increased 19 per cent in that time.

There were about 291,155 large trucks in Ontario and 191,291 Class A drivers in 2014, representing just 1.83 per cent of the province's driving population.