Quebec's truckers are fuming over a brand new incoming toll increase on the Highway 30 bridge linking Valleyfield and Les Cèdres.
The private company that manages the Serge Marcil Bridge has announced a 12 per cent increase in the rate for trucks to cross the bridge, from $1.85 to $2.05 per axle, which will come into effect on February 1st.
Marc Cadieux, the head of the province's trucking association, says for a typical 18-wheeler, that means paying in excess of $20 per crossing — which, taken with previous increases, is seriously cutting into his members' bottom line.
"For an independent truck, we've calculated that it could mean somewhere up to $400 a month on his expenses," he says. We as carriers absorbed a lot of increases in the past years, and this one is just too much."
Since the bridge opened for business in 2012, tolls have gone up 78 per cent — an overall increase he says is intolerable.
He suggests, too, that many of his members have deliberately avoided using the bridge to pay the tolls — which has the effect of sending more truck traffic through Valleyfield along highway 201.
The head of the company that manages the tolls told La Presse on Thursday that despite the toll hike, the Serge Marcil Bridge remains one of the most inexpensive toll bridges on the continent.