Shred-it trucks still rule the roost
Some things never change, like Shred-it’s co-opting of a small lakefront street as a base of operations for its illegally parked trucks. For years, we’ve been watching and reporting on Shred-it’s disregard for traffic congestion and parking rules, by pulling trucks into no-parking zones and cycling lanes to pick up and shred documents.
Shred-it and other document destruction firms try to maintain an unbroken chain of custody of paper to be shredded; the closer to the point of origin that the shredding happens, the more secure the process is. Parking tickets are part of the cost of doing business, but when tickets for parking in no stopping/standing zones went up to $150 a few years ago, it put a big crimp in Shred-it’s business model. Parking on financial district streets such as King St. and Bay St. was no longer feasible.
After that, the chain of custody was no longer quite so important. Instead of shredding documents close to the point of origin, Shred-it amended its business model for the financial district: collect bins full of documents with cargo trucks, then ship them to Freeland St., a small street that runs between Queens Quay and Lake Shore Blvd., one block east of Yonge St., where a shredding truck illegally parked at the curb awaits them.
We first noticed it a few years ago, when we spotted five Shred-it trucks on the oneblock-long street, two of which were double parked, leaving just a single lane for all traffic. The boss of Shred-it told us that five trucks at a time on Freeland St. was an unusual occurrence, and that he didn’t see anything wrong with using the street as a downtown base of operations.
If they were willing to compromise on shredding documents farther away from the point of origin, we asked the boss why they don’t rent a small space in the Port Lands to do the shredding, instead of dominating a small street.
No comment, he said, which tells you all you need to know about Shred-it’s priorities.
So we weren’t surprised to see three Shred-it trucks — two cargo trucks and a third with a shredding machine in it — parked on Freeland St. twice in the past few weeks, an indication that Shred-it has yet to change its ways.
We have no doubt that its trucks are occasionally tagged with a $30 ticket for occupying a no-parking zone, but it’s clear that occasional parking enforcement isn’t enough to persuade it to find a better place. Status: We started with the city’s right-of-way management department, asking if it could do anything. Andre Filippetti, the area manager, replied that it’s up to parking enforcement, but he sent us a link to the city’s new curbside deployment strategy, which discourages activities such as Shred-it’s. Rob MacKay, supervisor of police parking enforcement, said a “directed patrol,” in which officers are instructed to ticket offenders such as Shred-it much more often, could be used to dissuade it. But he didn’t say if such an order would be made. We also got a call from a traffic operations official who has taken an interest, but he was only looking for more information. We called Shred-it many times over the past week and were twice told that our request to speak to someone had been passed along to a marketing official, but nobody returned our call. Until the city decides to get serious about it, Shred-it will not be persuaded to do the right thing and find a better place to set up shop. And that’s unacceptable.
What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.