British Columbia Special Agreement License Plates

Special Agreement plates are one of the hardest of modern BC plate types to find, be it on the road (if there still are any on the roads) or in the hands of a plate collector. This is becuase very few of these plates were ever issued, and when they were issued it was only to two companies in relatively small, isolated communities.

There are generally three prefixes that are associated with the Special Agreement plate type. These are the "GR" prefix that were issued to Tahsis Forestry Company and truck owner-operators contracting to the company around the area of Gold River (a former company town). The second type is the "CL" prefix which was issued to Cominco in the town of Trail, and finally the "SA" prefix which amalgamated the former two prefixes into a single plate type in 1985-86 when the Flag Graphic series was first issued.

Gold River is located approximately 60km west of Campbell River on Vancouver Island, and was originally developed in 1965, with a pulp and paper mill that opened in 1967 and operated continually until a down-turn in the forestry sector in the late 1990s forced its closure in 1999.

Pictured above is an example of a Hayes WHDX in the vicinity of Gold River (photographed by Paul Keenlyside in 1999).

Due to the topography of the area, when Gold River was developed there was no room for both an exclusive logging road and a public highway. So, the British Columbia Highways Department re-engineered the logging road with 12-foot lanes as part of Highway 28. Once the road was finished, plates were issued (not the modern SA plates), so that the large logging trucks could legally use the highway when fully loaded. These trucks could only otherwise use Highway 28 if they were empty and escorted by a pilot car.

In the 1970s, there was Company Logging Division (otherwise known as a "Camp") located west of Gold River. The majority of the trucks used at this camp were fitted with the GR series Special Agreement plates, as were some of the private truck owners contracted to haul lumber to the mill.

The plate pictured above would have been possibly the 16th plate issued in 1973 - the first year of the GR prefix.

Trucks with these plates generally tended to weigh anywhere from 120 to 140 tons (or more when pulling a log wagon with trailer). When fully loaded, the trucks could be from 12-14 feet wide. Of the trucks used, all of them were built in the Vancouver area for West Coast use - such as the Hayes' WHDX pictured at right (although there were also Canadian Kenworth and Pacific).

First known issue of the GR plates was in 1973, with new plates being issued each year (with alternating colours) to 1979 when yearly validated plates in the red-on-white colour scheme (similar to the Dealer and Repairer plates issued that same year). As mentioned above, when the Flag Graphic came out in 1985, the plates switched to the surrent 1234-SA format.