Trucking operation linked to fatality in Brandon shut down by Alberta government

The Alberta government has shut down Conquer Transport Inc., the trucking company linked to a crash near Brandon in which a 49-year-old woman, who had the right of way, was killed.

Devin Dreeshen, Alberta’s transport minister, said the province launched an investigation into Conquer Transport after one of its semi-trucks ran a stop sign on May 27, 2026 at Highway 110 at Richmond Avenue East.

The semi hit an SUV driven by Xiaoyun Zhang, a Chinese immigrant who worked at the nearby pork processing plant. She died at the scene and the truck driver, 35-year-old Brijpal Panwar, has been charged with dangerous driving causing death.

“Our investigative team went out and … saw numerous non-compliance issues, whether it was hours of service with their drivers not being recorded properly, vehicle maintenance and inspections being insufficient, their safety program also being insufficient.”

The company was fined “for obstructing our investigator of actually investigating them,” Dreeshen told the Free Press Friday.

The carrier’s safety fitness rating was downgraded to “unsatisfactory.”

Alberta uses a safety rating system to monitor carriers. An unsatisfactory rating, which is given when a carrier has “demonstrated an unacceptable risk to the public,” shuts down operations immediately.

Conquer Transport was fined $16,500, the minister said.

Manpreet and Paramjit Dhaliwal are listed as Conquer Transport leads in a provincial government database. The company is listed as “temporarily closed” online.

Manpreet declined to comment Friday after being contacted by the Free Press.

In late 2021, the Manitoba government removed Conquer Transport’s safety certificate for being non-compliant with highway safety laws and truck regulations. In 2022, the government learned the company was still operating in Manitoba by using its safety fitness certificate and vehicle registration issued by Alberta.

The company had changed its name when it applied for the new registration. The term “chameleon carrier” is used when a company changes its name to get around suspensions or shutdowns.

“For lack of a better analogy, it’s almost like a whack-a-mole game of when a province tries to find one, they just pop up in a different jurisdiction with a different name and slightly different structure,” Dreeshen said.

Manitoba’s transport minister, Lisa Naylor, said she’s “thrilled” to learn Alberta had taken action against the firm.

“It’s five years after they were shut down in Manitoba. This really needed to happen and I wish it had happened before someone died on the highway here in Manitoba,” she said. “But I’m really glad to hear the news now.”

Naylor said she has lobbied the federal government for a public registry that would list details about trucking companies across the country, including possible breaches of safety fitness standards.

“I think that working together is the most important thing, and I’m really pleased with the growing consensus among provinces and territories that we need to have a federal database, and we need that support from Canada,” she said.

Aaron Dolyniuk, executive director of the Manitoba Trucking Association, said a database wouldn’t go far enough because each province uses different safety metrics.

“We need more than that,” he said. “We need a national system that every province and jurisdiction uses for interprovincial operators, so that there is no place to hide, and everybody understands the same safety language in every province and territory.”

While shutting down one company is a good first step, the fact it was able to operate in Manitoba years after its safety certification was pulled speaks to “ how badly the trucking industry has been undermined when it comes to safety, as well as competitiveness,” Dolyniuk said.

“Bad actors are using these grey areas so they can exploit them to exploit others and drive rates down, because they are operating illegally and that is their business model,” he said.

The practice means legitimate firms that care about safety are at a competitive disadvantage and public safety is jeopardized.

The Alberta government may be trying to set an example to warn other operators unsafe practices won’t be tolerated, said Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.

“It’s very definitive, when you basically put a company out of business,” he said.

“It reminds me of an old Chinese expression, that sometimes, you have to kill a chicken to frighten all the monkeys … the idea is that you make an example, and you make a very dramatic example, which this definitely is.”

Government oversight, Prentice said, is crucial, both to protect the public and the industry.

“The market itself will not be able to discipline characters,” he said. “There’s too infrequent experiences with a bad operator, for example, to be able to have the market discipline someone who’s bad, and that’s why we need this kind of oversight.”

Panwar’s next court date is Oct. 6 in Brandon. A judge allowed him to live in Ontario while awaiting trial. His bail plan included a $5,000 cash deposit and a $5,000 surety.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca