The owner of a local trucking company isn’t impressed with Marine Atlantic’s announced replacement of the Leif Ericson.

The corporation has a five-year leasing agreement with Stena for the A Napita, a vessel that had recently been operating in the Mediterranean between Corsica and Marseille, France.

Marine Atlantic says the ferry, which is designed for both passenger and commercial traffic, won’t be delivered until the fall, after the peak summer travel season.

Chris Howlett of Akita Equipment says he was hoping to see another vessel added to the Gulf service, rather than simply replacing an existing one.

“In the summertime, with tourism and everything going on, and then there’s more food being sold, it really stretches out the system right now,” says Howlett.

“They couldn’t handle it in the past four or five summers. I think it’s grown around 15 percent, compared to years before COVID. Here we are now; really all we’re doing is replacing a vessel. We need another vessel.”

The capacity of the A Napita, which will be renamed, is nearly 25 per cent greater than the Leif Ericson.