Industry leaders cheer new rules,
Ontario’s new regulations for tow trucks are a step in the right direction for bolstering consumer protections and quashing predatory operators, industry leaders say.
On Tuesday, the Ontario government announced widespread changes to the towing industry, introducing new rules and regulations for operators in the GTA in an effort to extinguish the violence and corruption that’s dominated so much of the industry for years.
The changes include a pilot project beginning this summer, establishing four designated zones along provincial highways that give a single towing firm a monopoly, barring competitors from racing to the scene of an accident.
The move is necessary to improve motorist safety and crack down on predatory businesses tactics, says Joey
Gagne, owner and president of Abrams Towing Services.
“Hopefully, it will be the first step to creating a system that gives consumers some protections, and give the towing operators some peace of mind, too,” said Gagne.
In the aftermath of a car crash on the highway, it’s not uncommon to see tow trucks racing to the scene of the accident — vying to be the first on site to haul away the pulverized vehicle. The trucks swoop in, pick up the car and drag it to an operator that charges exorbitant fees to have it released.
The system is damaging not only for consumers, but also for honest operators who see their work lost to opportunistic, poorly trained towing companies, says Gagne, a past president of the Provincial Towing Association of Onta
rio. At present, tow-truck operators are not required to complete training on the skills and equipment needed to safely tow a vehicle.
Rather, they are governed by a patchwork of regulations determined by municipalities instead of the province.
Without provincial intervention, oversight over highwayoperating towing companies becomes a grey area, where companies travel in and out of municipal boundaries on a daily basis.
“The municipalities all have bylaws implemented at a local level that are totally inconsistent with each other and all have different requirements,” said Teresa Di Felipe, assistant vice-president of government and community relations at the Canadian Automobile Association.
The turf war has turned the scenes of car accidents into battlegrounds. In the past three years, four drivers have been killed and at least 30 trucks have been torched as a result of the turf wars, police have said.
The Ontario government established a task force in June 2020 after Ontario police made 19 arrests in connection with the towing industry.
The task force’s finding, that there is a “patchwork of requirements” across the province with insufficient government oversight, led to recommendations that the Ontario government establish restricted tow zones, licences to operate commercial tow trucks and new legislation that bolsters oversight and enforcement.
On Tuesday, the government said that additional towing companies will only be able to operate within the newly designed restricted zones with permission from the provincial police or government.
Di Felice says towing operators will likely welcome new regulations.
“As of now, you have competition with a group that doesn’t play by the rules. Maybe 15 years ago, you would have seen more fear of over-regulation, but now it seems like towing operators are in agreement: the status quo doesn’t work.”