Merritt

Description

What’s included: $1,890 flat truck rate covers fuel and deadhead, size/weight limits (800 lbs, 5’7″ bed, 60″ height max — larger loads require the trailer at $2,365), layover ($375) and detention ($140/hr — 30 min free at pickup, 30 min free at drop-off, tracked separately) apply on top if triggered.

The run from Vancouver

Merritt is about 280 km out, roughly three hours — Highway 1 to Hope, then 115 km up the Coquihalla. Coquihalla Summit sits at 1,244 m, with the Box Canyon chain-up area holding 70 vehicles, the Zopkios southbound brake check, and the 285 m Great Bear Snowshed on the climb. There is no fuel anywhere across those 115 km, and Britton Creek is a rest area, not a fuel stop. Merritt is where Highway 5, Highway 5A, Highway 8 and Highway 97C all meet, which makes it the last and first services stop for everything moving between the coast and the Interior. When the Coquihalla closes, Highway 3 through Princeton becomes the standing detour.

What moves here

Merritt’s freight function is the junction itself. Highway 5, Highway 8, Highway 5A and the Okanagan Connector all feed through here toward Kelowna, Penticton, Logan Lake, Lillooet, Princeton, Kamloops and Hope, which puts a lot of time-sensitive freight through a town of seven thousand. The forestry base is not what it was: Aspen Planers halted all Merritt sawmill and planer operations on 23 September 2025 for an undetermined period, affecting roughly 100 workers, after harvesting only 29% of its allowable cut over two and a half years. No reopening date has been confirmed. Cattle ranching in the Nicola Valley remains — the town formed out of three ranches at the confluence the locals call The Forks. The city counted 7,051 people in 2021, down slightly from 2016.

Scales and seasonal limits

There is no inspection station at Merritt. The nearest are the Hope cluster — Hunter Creek, Laidlaw and Haig — and the two Kamloops scales on the Trans-Canada west of that city. BC posts spring load restrictions as a percentage of legal axle loading — 100%, 70% or 50% — with a tandem group dropping from 17,000 kg to 11,900 kg at 70%. They apply only above 5,500 kg licensed GVW. The Nicola service area lifted its 2026 restrictions on 1 May. Winter tires or chains are required on Highway 5 from 1 October to 30 April; the fine for running without them is $121, and $598 for a commercial vehicle bypassing an active chain-up.

Local fun fact

Merritt was a coal town for 56 years before it was a country music town, and it had three separate collieries. The Middlesboro Colliery southwest of town was the valley’s largest, using coal cutting machines and producing 124,150 tonnes before federal subsidies ended in 1944. Diamond Vale, a kilometre east, produced 42,087 tonnes and closed in 1945. Coldwater Coal was the last to go, in 1963. The railway came here for that coal — a branch line from Spences Bridge reached Merritt in November 1906, and the first shipment went out in June 1907. Downtown, the bronzed handprints of the Walk of Stars are the easiest place to direct a driver to.