Trucking company involved in multiple B.C. overpass collisions suing gov’t over loss of business

The trucking company at the centre of a major overpass strike along Highway 99 in Delta just after Christmas last year is taking the province to court, claiming that being suspended from operating is making it lose millions of dollars in business.

Chohan Freight Forwarders has filed a lawsuit in the BC Supreme Court asking the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to overturn the suspension of the company’s safety certificate, which halted its entire fleet as of late last year.

“It’s been suspended since December 28, 2023, and we were expecting that we would receive in late January an update on that status and when it came, it was simply an extension of the suspension,” said lawyer Catherine George with Farris LLP, Chohan Freight Forwarders’ legal team.

“At that point, we filed the petition seeking to challenge that suspension on the basis that we don’t believe that it is necessary to ensure road safety.”

George says a notice of application was then filed, seeking to stay the suspension. The hearing, she says, was set for Friday, Feb. 9, though George adds the ministry’s lawyers notified the company’s attorneys that it would be “issuing the cancellation order shortly.”

Chohan says the driver involved in the December crash failed to follow instructions of the company’s safety manager when he realized his load was over height.

The driver, instead, called some friends who were not associated with the company, who told him it would be fine to proceed, court documents outline.

“From the company’s point of view, the suspension and the cancellation appeared designed not to ensure road safety, which is what the legislation is designed to do, but to punish Chohan Freight Forwarders for an incident that was entirely out of their control,” George said.

She notes the driver involved in the incident was terminated.

Chohan has been blocked from using its fleet since the incident, and as a result, it says it’s been losing upwards of $1 million a week.

“There is also an impact on their other drivers, both the employees and the owner-operators are not earning an income because the way that they would normally earn an income is by kilometres driven or loads picked up. So there are approximately 63 drivers who haven’t been earning an income since December 28th, 2023,” George explained.

Meanwhile, lawyers say the Alberta-based Chohan Group Limited has a family connection with the company in B.C., but they are separate legal entities, and it should be allowed to operate in B.C.

“People aren’t understanding that in the public and then the ministry is reacting and saying, ‘well, we want to look as if we are taking steps to address this.’ But those steps, in our view, aren’t related to the purposes that the regulator is supposed to operate for, which is road safety,” said George.

‘My only hope is that on the way to court, they don’t run into a bridge’: premier

Speaking during an unrelated news conference Wednesday, Premier David Eby didn’t hold back.

“British Columbians, especially in the Lower Mainland, have been astonished and frustrated by the number of overpass strikes, where a truck hits a bridge or an overpass on a highway, and one of the worst offenders has been this company, Chohan,” the premier said.

“The astonishing part is that the company thinks that they should be still able to operate and they’re going to court to challenge our prohibition on their operating until they figure out how high bridges are and how high their trucks are. My only hope is that on the way to court, they don’t run into a bridge. I encourage them to take the bus or some other form of public transit on the way to the courthouse.”

Drivers with Chohan Freight Forwarders have hit bridges or overpasses six times since 2021, Ministry of Transportation data shows. Four of these strikes were in 2022 alone, with violation tickets issued in all cases except for the Dec. 28 incident which is still under investigation.