News that the Coquihalla could be open to essential traffic sooner than expected is music to the ears of the trucking industry.

“It’s a game changer,” BC Trucking Association President Dave Earle said, on the NL Morning News.

“However, we should really stress that when we talk about reopening, it’s not reopening per se. It’s having a pathway for certain move for commercial goods for essential traffic only,” he added. “There’s going to be lots of places with constrictions and limited movements and capacity and very low speed limits.”

And even when the highway opens to commercial trucks, Earle says it will still be in a limited capacity and not like it was before the floods last month.

“What it will do is give us an option of more capacity to be able to get back to that level that we’re trying to get to,” he said.

“I mean even with all the moves now, even with all the redistribution, we’re still only seeing half of the commercial traffic move across the province that we did before the disaster.”

As it stands, Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton is the only route for semi trucks between the Lower Mainland and the Southern Interior.

Earle says there has been a degree of predictability over the past few days that wasn’t there right after the floods, though he says it will be a long time before B.C.’s highways back to normal.