PRO-TRUCKER MAGAZINE
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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK... BY JOHN WHITE
VOLUME 20, ISSUE 09 OF 11
PUBLISHER/EDITOR John White john@ptmag.ca PRODUCTION/CIRCULATION Tori Proudley tori@ptmag.ca ADMINISTRATION Donna White donna@ptmag.ca ADVERTISING/MARKETING John White john@ptmag.ca Tori Proudley tori@ptmag.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dave Madill • Scott Casey Greg Evasiuk • Mel McConaghy Ed Murdoch • Colin Black • Cyn Tobin Bill Weatherstone • Lane Kranenburg PHOTOGRAPHY Ben Proudley David Benjatschek wowtrucks.com HEAD OFFICE Phone: 604-580-2092 Published eleven times a year by Pro-Trucker Magazine Inc., The contents of this publication may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without prior written consent of the publisher. The advertiser agrees to protect the publisher against legal action based upon libelous or inaccurate statements; the unauthorized use of materials or photographs; and/or any other errors or omissions in connection with advertisements placed in Pro-Trucker Magazine. The publisher can and will refuse any advertising which in his opinion is misleading or in poor taste. The publisher does not endorse or make claim or guarantee the validity or accuracy of any advertisement herein contained. All materials submitted for publication are subject to editing at the publisher’s discretion. The act of mailing or e-mailing material shall be considered an expressed warranty by the contributor that the material is original and in no way an infringement on the rights of others.
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Road Trip! One of the major differences between Canada and the U. S. is the number and quality of rest stops that are open to both 4 wheelers and truckers alike. Unlike Canada, the U.S. deems it important to not only pass laws concerning hours of service but to also build the infrastructure that makes it possible for truckers to actually obey the law by building rest stops where they can pull over when out of hours or fatigued. The vast majority of these truck stops are very clean, have washrooms and are in a park like setting with picnic areas where people can get out and relax. This is in addition to the many commercial truck stops that drivers have the option of pulling into provides many options for drivers while on the road. It has been a few years since I have travelled on U.S. highways and the Canadian drivers I have met and talked to on this trip have nothing but praise for the stops available to them. Not only are there a multitude of commercial trucks stops with food and showers, but they are often situated in an area that also has repair shops, tire shops and truck washes. I pulled into the Love’s Truck Stop in Ellensburg, Washington to fuel up and have a short rest when a good looking truck pulling a low boy slowly cruised by still dripping water from the truck wash next door. The bright red colour looked familiar and I was pleased to see the well-known Jamie Davis Towing logo on the door. It was being driven by Dillon McMordie who said that he was going just south of Ellensburg to pick up a wreck and take it back to Aldergrove BC. Dillion, along with Jamie Davis and others from their crew, attended the Chrome for Kids event in Mission this year. In conversation, he informed me that Bruce Hardy’s truck was well on its way to being rebuilt and should be ready for the show next year. Bruce Hardy, or “Crazy Horse” as he was known, was a well-known and well-liked driver and a bit of a legend in the towing industry. He was a popular personality on the Highway Thru Hell TV series who sadly passed away in 2014 from lung cancer. On another note, the uncertainty of the NAFTA agreement has many companies holding back on expansion. The result has been a decrease in the number of goods going south. Trumps assertion that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada is partially true if you only look at goods, but if you include services, which is the normal way to calculate trade, the U.S. has over an 8 billion dollar surplus. But this seems to matter little to a president who routinely deals in alternative facts.
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LETTERS to the EDITOR
e Whit John agazine
ker M Truc Prote
John Whi r Magazine Pro-Trucke
To The Editor, A customer brought in an old ’72 Mack R600 Tandem to sell at our auction. As I was parking it I glanced at the hinges inside the cab and had a 44 year old flashback. It was May 1974, my wife and I returning from a company Bar BQ at about midnight. It was a nice clear evening when suddenly we were engulfed in a cloud of dust obscuring the entire highway. From that point on things got kind of surreal. I noticed high to my left a wheel spinning in the air and at the same time, I saw someone running on the shoulder of the road. I parked alongside this person and asked what was going on, all he said was “run, it’s going to blow.” By this time the dust had settled and I could make out that it was an overturned tanker tractor upside down in the ditch. I asked the person if he knew where the driver was, he said he didn’t know and kept running. I backed my car up alongside the wreck and saw it was an R700 Mack and a 5000-gallon tanker upside down and the gasoline he was carrying was gushing into the ditch. I
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got out of my ’66 Plymouth to check things out, and to my dilemma, the batteries were shorting out and the insulation from the batteries was dripping down and catching the dry grass on fire. My first thought was to get out of there when I heard a voice from the cab. “Can you help me?” It was the driver pinned in the cab. My dilemma increased as I didn’t know if I could put the fire out before it was too late. I started kicking dirt on the flames, that snuffed them out but the melting insulation kept dripping out and reigniting the flames, so I went in my trunk and pulled out a tire iron, pried the battery cables off the batteries, that stopped the shorting. I stomped the rest of the flames out kicking out whatever sand and gravel I could find. I noticed I had flares in my trunk so I sent my wife down the road with them to warn traffic. I positioned my car alongside the upside down tractor and set up my 12-volt trouble light to see what was going on. About the same time a southbound ’71 or ’72 Lemans stopped and the driver yelled across the ditch, “do you need a fire extinguisher?” He could see the smoke from the battery cables. The open flames were out but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to hose them down, so I said sure if you have one, he went to his trunk, came out with an extinguisher, comes running across the ditch. I could hear him splish splashing across the ditch and he yells “what’s in the ditch”, I yelled back “gasoline!” Too bad it was so dark I can just imagine what the look
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on his face was, but he kept coming, I thought this was pretty brave of him. After he sprayed the cables down we discussed the driver’s situation. He was pinned against the roof of the crushed cab by the back of the seats and we couldn’t see him very well, but he was alert and talking. We felt the best plan of action was to remove the door so we could access him. I just happened to have a tool kit in my car so I got the wrench we needed and removed all the bolts on the hinges, but the cab was so mangled we couldn’t manually pull the door off. So my partner said he could get his car and try to pull it off. I chopped a hole in the door with my tire iron, I happened to have an 8’ piece of logging chain in my trunk so we used that to hook up to the car. That didn’t work, the car just spun and the door stayed where it was. About the same time an RCMP officer showed up and he asked me to move my car so I explained to him that we were using the car for lights and a tool crib. I told him his efforts were better spent on crowd control as there were 5000 gallons of gas pooling in the ditch. He agreed and went about to warn the people. Meanwhile, a Kingsway Transport cab-over Freightliner showed up, I explained to him the situation and he said: “I’ll pull up close and you can hook on.” That worked and the door came off. My buddy and I peeked into the overturned cab to see if we could pull the driver out. We noticed that the fleshy part of his buttocks was lacerated down to the bone. We
looked at each other with a quizzical look and I asked the driver “are you ok?” He said he was fine so I figured no use telling him what we saw. The problem we now had is we couldn’t pull him out because the seat was in the way. It was a four bolt pedestal seat so we figured let’s unbolt the seat and pull it out then we can access him. So I take my 9/16th wrench and quickly remove 3 of the 4 bolts. The 4th one I couldn’t reach. The driver said “I can reach it” so I hand him the wrench and he dropped it, I thought he’s probably hurt more than he thinks, but to my surprise, he asked for the wrench back and he removed
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the bolt. Now the seat is free but his legs are in the road to remove the seat. So I tell my buddy I’m going to brace myself against the truck and bend his legs just enough so you can yank the seat. I told the driver this may hurt a bit, I placed my feet against his legs and pushed hard and my buddy pulled the seat out. Great! Now we can get him out. We gently pulled him out and slowly walked him to the ambulance which had just arrived. The driver was probably the most appreciative person I ever encountered, and off to the hospital he went. I gathered up my tools and got my car out of there as quickly as possible as I still had the specter of 5000 gallons of gas blowing up. I found my wife sitting in a car with some kind people and the fellow that was running up the road was there too. Apparently, he was in the truck when it rolled and came out of the back window. He got a ride to Saskatoon with the people and I went home. My only regret is I never found out the names of the players in this scenario and I sometimes wonder about them. Oh, such is life. Robert A. Roy, Saskatoon, Sask.
reFLecTIons Thru my WIndshIeLd By Dave Madill Dave Madill was Pro-Trucker Magazine’s Rig of the Month in June of 2001 and he has been entertaining us with his poetry ever since. Dave has published three books of poems that are available by special order through Chapters Book Stores.
Delivering Grandpas Buckwheat We had a couple of fields on the farm that were marginal due to weeds so Grandpa; (Pop); decided that we would use both of them to plant Buckwheat. Now Buckwheat is planted later in the season so it allows you to till the ground for a bit longer and kill a lot of weeds and once that stuff started growing it choked out any weeds that tried to grow along with it so this would effectively bring these two fields back into better production and produce a cash crop. Pop tilled the soil well, planted his seed and also notified the local Apiary of what he was doing so they brought in a bunch of hives and placed them between the two fields and alongside a clover field. Crop grew well and late in September we combined the fields and I trucked the seed up to the barn in our old grain truck. The yield was great, about 20 to 25 bushels per acre and that stuff is HEAVY so Editor’s note: Thank you for having the courage to help our old truck got a good workout by the time it was all in under such precarious conditions. If I am contacted by any the granary. Pop had done some phoning around and found that Collingwood granaries had a market for the stuff and of the players involved I will pass it on to you. OctObEr 2018
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a pretty good price. Now, this was a problem as I didn’t have a driver’s license yet and Collingwood was 28 miles away, On top of that all but the first three miles were on the highway and we had to go through town. Dad decided that the grain truck was not up to the job as we figured we had almost 17 tons and our grain truck was only a 5 tonner. The only way to do it was to use Dads R Model Mack and the tandem gravel box with the tailgate with a chute in it. Loaded up, tarped the load well and started off. Now Pop just had to come along and Dad had to drive and someone had to crawl inside the trailer to shovel the last bits out so I had to come along also and ride in the sleeper. We delivered the load to the elevator and ended up with 16 ½ Tons of product and since it was fresh and clean grain managed to get a good price for it as food quality grain. Started back for home and since I was in the sleeper anyway I sort of half dozed off. Coming home there was one stretch of highway that was straight as an arrow for almost 15 miles and I guess Dad sort of went to sleep a bit. I awoke to bumps and crashing and a lot of language that I cannot repeat here and finally the truck came to a stop and I was able to crawl out of the sleeper to find we were in a farmers summer fallow. Pop was choking and gasping as he had swallowed his chewing tobacco and Dad was livid as we had taken out 30 feet of brand new 8 wire Cattle fence. The truck was in fair shape, broken mirror and a bent scratched bumper but was still drivable. After looking around I realized we were on a friends farm so we picked up the two broken fence poles, cut the fence wires and loaded it all in the back of the truck. A short trip across the field, down the lane and through the gate and we were back on a county road and soon back on the highway and home. Next morning after chores Pop and I loaded a couple fence posts and some leftover fencing in the back of the pickup, threw in some tools and away we went to do some fence repair. Three hours later Pop and I had the fence back in shape and headed home. Dad was still in the garage so we helped him remove the bumper. straighten it back out and with a coat of paint, it too was back in A-one condition. To this day I do not think that the Maw’s ever figured out who tore up and repaired their fence and I guess unless
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they read this they will never know. I do know Dad never ever went to sleep behind the wheel again, we did make some good money from Pop’s buckwheat and the Apiary gave us 10 pounds of honey so I guess everything worked out in the end.
IdLe TIme
By Scott Casey Scott, our Rig of The Month for May 2003 has written “Ghostkeepers” a book about his years as a gun toting truck driver while serving as a Canadian Peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia.
Rampaging Bull As a boy growing up on a small farm in cattle country of central British Columbia I was routinely shown, merely by the nature of farming, how certain animals behaved compared to others. Let’s take the horse for example. I bet you didn’t know, but a horse is the only animal on earth capable of going in every direction at the same time. It’s quite remarkable to see. If you are unsure, just watch any video of a horse when it is startled and slow it down frame by frame. Horses don’t go looking for trouble, they see a big rock on the side of the trail and they see it as a horse eating rock. So, it takes time to train your horse to trust that the rock isn’t going to attack them. They are a very smart animal given the correct training. So much so that it is very possible to ride your horse without a saddle or bridle, bit or reigns. They will move based on your body movements in relation to them. Want to go left? Squeeze ever so gently with your right leg. The horse goes left. And vice versa. Sheep, well what can I say about sheep. They’re woolly. Moving right along. Chickens aren’t very bright, are they? They cluck and lay eggs and peck each other’s imperfections until someone has to go for the “big sleep.” Then there are the cattle. Not very bright either. That can be witnessed any time you see one of them sticking its tongue three feet up its own nose. One seems to be a little on the smarter side though, he’s the Bull. Somehow,
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he managed to escape having his sensitive bits from being snipped off as a young lad. That to me is a pretty smart feller right there. My sincere condolences to those of you reading this who have opted for that later in life. Although it is smart in its own way (no more calves wandering around the house). But back to the Bull. Although he’s dodged the loss of his dangly parts, he lives secluded and for the most part seems to be a miserable cuss. Perhaps this is because he only goes on short dates for two weeks a year every spring with all the ladies in town. Now the interesting thing is horses and bulls are herd animals and they are often using the same land for providing for themselves. Much like truck drivers, they are using the same highways. This, of course, leads to interaction between the two species and sometimes it doesn’t end well. Like the road rage incident near Vanderhoof this past few days. Many drivers are like herds of horses, they can be trained to drive in a specific fashion for optimum results for the farm. And then, of course, there is always that one rampaging bull who just sours life on the range by acting like a miserable cuss. Losing focus of what he is actually supposed to be doing and lunges in a blind fury only to once again be misdirected by the bright shiny things in his gaze, kicking and snorting but really doing nothing but looking like a fool. I’m sure what may come of this, is the rampaging bull being neutered in some fashion by the local veterinarians.
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Tyres Across The Pond Colin Black lives in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland and has been driving truck for over 40 years. His story shows us once again that the problems drivers face are universal.
Job Satisfaction The trucking magazines and media are full of all the technological improvements that are currently going on in modern truck manufacturing. Some new trucks are fitted with collision avoidance sensors that help the driver to avoid other traffic, but really only hold drivers back when the truck brakes because car drivers cut in too close in front of them. Other sensors help them stay in the lane they’re supposed to be in, another unnecessary “extra” we don’t need, we can do that ourselves with the steering wheel and some concentration. If, like me, you’ve been driving for forty years or more, as a rookie you didn’t know what a sensor was. Trucks were very basic, a lot of them were timber framed cabs with sheet aluminum on the outside. If the truck had power assisted steering you thought it was your lucky day, trucks had a heater in the cab, but it wasn’t much use. In fact, you had to wait for the heat from the engine coming through the gaps in the engine cowling to defrost the windows in winter. For me when I got in a strange cab my eyes would be on the gear stick, a plain black knob meant it was a David Brown six speed. That coupled to the Gardener 180 badge on the radiator grill told you this was a bosses favourite, economical and long-lasting. The downside of that was, with only 180 bhp you were going nowhere fast with a normal 20-ton payload, but the pace of life was slower back then. Most drivers would probably prefer a 220 Cummins coupled to a fuller road ranger or an Eaton ‘box if they were given the choice, but you take what you’re given. In the early days, there were no sleeper cabs, but driver accommodation was everywhere. So when you were loaded and ready to go you phoned ahead to your favourite digs and booked a bed where you thought the end of your day would be. Then you knew there would be a good meal, a clean bed and a warm shower waiting at the end of the shift. There was no need to carry an alarm clock either, when you booked in and paid the fee you would be asked what time you wanted to be woken in the morning. A good meal in the evening and a big breakfast at the start of your shift. Why would anybody want to swap that for a night in the cab? At first, in some of the bigger driver’s digs, there was just one big room with maybe twenty beds in it, just like an army barracks. As time went on they got modernized and the beds were partitioned off to create a small room with a door you could lock, this also made it less likely you would get woken up before your time. As more and more sleeper cabs appeared on the roads,
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there was a company in Carlisle where the drivers refused to use them, their argument was the office staff don’t sleep in the office, and if management go to a conference in another part of the country they stay in a hotel. The drivers, backed by their union, wanted an increase in pay to use the sleeper cabs, they reckoned to be able to sleep anywhere would result in an increase in productivity for the company and detract from the driver’s quality of life. The pay rise was never going to happen of course. Eventually though, some drivers started using the sleeper cabs. They were still being paid the same overnight allowance so some drivers saw it as extra money in their pocket not having to pay for a bed. The fleet in that company, like trucks all over the country, eventually became all sleeper cabs, with the popularity of sleepers growing it was almost a special order to put a day cab on a new truck. And sleeper cabs were easier to sell on when the time came. Unlike modern day truckers who are monitored every minute of their working day with trackers, mobile phones and electronic logs. It was common for some drivers to contact their base only when they had off-loaded and reloaded for home. There was a great sense of job satisfaction leaving with a loaded trailer, delivering that load, and getting a return load back home, all off your own back. Now you’ve got an old-school professional coming into his depot and the first thing the clerk behind the desk says is, the tracker shows you stopped for 15 minutes when you were only 30 minutes from the depot why was that? Is it any wonder there’s a shortage of experienced older drivers?
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and unload then reload empty skids, drums and any returns. It wasn’t easy work as all freight had to be hand bombed. When I finished up at Yarmouth, I would head up to Digby, and take the ferry boat to St. John, New Brunswick, and from there, head back to Toronto, arriving back before noon on Thursday. After a time, I had that run down pat, and anyone who wanted to get in touch with me could call ahead on any given day and catch me within an hour on my route. I drove that run for about 6 months and then was asked to take a trip up into the Northern Quebec bush camps. The tanker had five compartments and was loaded with hydraulic oil for giant Korreing tree harvesters. I would travel a couple hundred miles north of Ottawa, then turn off the highway, onto a bush road for 100 miles to base camp, pick up a guide and then travel about 30 or 40 miles into the wilderness to reach the equipment. I was always the first large truck to reach the ever-changing sites. I had to be CAT By Bill Weatherstone dragged over humps and through muskeg more than once. They had been having trouble getting drivers to do that This is an excerpt from Bill’s book, customer as they had lost two rigs, up to that point. If you “The Life and Times of William even mentioned Lake Ottawa, (Lac Outaouais) Quebec, the John Weatherstone.” drivers would shun you. There were no volunteers to do that job, so Old Bill was elected to do the run. Texaco Canada That was not the only run drivers refused. Sept-isle I am one of those drifters that need change. Once on a job (Seven Islands) was another location – it ran along the for a few years, it seems repetitious and boring. I just cannot Quebec north shore. The run started at Quebec City and stay put. I need greener pastures. went northeast along the St. Laurence River to Havre-StSo as it was in 1986 when I showed up on the doorstep of Pierre which was across from Anticosti Island in the Gulf of Texaco Canada. It was in the lubricant division. They were St. Lawrence This stretch of road in the past had claimed a having a hard time finding experienced tanker drivers so lot of lives and equipment. The grades ran at 13 & 14%, and they greeted me with open arms and I went in on a contract one, in particular, was a nerve-racking 19%. basis. The winter running required the drivers to be totally fearI started with a once a week 4-drop trip to Nova Scotia, less, or at the least, half nuts. That one hill was so notorious where I would deliver to Truro, Kentville, Bridgewate and that they eventually had to tunnel through the mountain Yarmouth. The truck was loaded with 65,000 lbs. of lubri- to ease the grade. Once you started down, you were comcants, that consisted of cases, pails and drums. I had a tri- mitted. All the brakes you had wouldn’t stop you and then axel trailer and would leave Toronto on Saturday morning suddenly you were in a dirty tight turn at the bottom. Miss for a Monday delivery in Truro. Then go like crazy to get the turn and you could quite possibly go for a swim in the to Kentville and Bridgewater off-loaded the same day. Then mighty St. Lawrence River. Oh, yes…there were no snow I would motor on down to Yarmouth, layover till morning, ploughs after dark. r
THE DIESEL GYPSY
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Job Description: The team’s will run five days a week. Some flexibility in availability will occasionally be required. Qualifications: Class 1 license • LCV Qualified • 2 years of experience • Reliable and dependable Ability to work well in a team • TDG, WHMIS and Forklift experience Must be able to provide a criminal record check, drivers abstract and 3 work related references. We Offer: $$Great Pay$$ • $5,000 Sign On Bonus Per Driver (varies on location) Competitive wages • Paid stops and waiting time • Benefits – including short term and long term disability • Profit sharing • Scholarship program • And more!
For more information, please contact: Rickey Pagan 1-833-LTL-JOBS (1-833-585-5627) Email: rpagan@manitoulintransport.com | www.manitoulintransport.com OctObEr 2018
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Rig of the Month
By John White That beautiful truck you see on the cover and in this article I was born in Edmonton, Alberta and I am a 2nd generation belongs to Jason Koch of Diamond City Alberta which is trucker. My Dad and my greatest mentor Ron Koch was an about 10 miles north of Lethbridge. This is his story: independent owner-operator in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
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He hauled crude oil around the Alberta area for Gibson’s and Trimac. Along with many other drivers like him, Ron also provided tractor service for many different companies during the slow oil times. Over his career, he hauled every type of freight you could imagine. As a toddler and child, I spent countless hours in and around the truck with my Dad. I used to stand behind him in the seat while he was driving so that I could see everything that he saw. My Dad realized early that I wanted to be involved in everything concerning the truck. One time when I was very young Dad left me in his brand new Ford LTL 9000 Louisville so that he could conduct some business. I was so frustrated and upset at being left out of the “trucking business” that I picked up my dads tire hammer and put it through the passenger side of the dash. It was one of those hard plastic vinyl dashes and that little round hole served as a reminder for the 7 odd years that he had it. He didn’t get mad but he never left me out of the action again. My first vivid memory of trucking and all it entailed was while on a trip I made with my Dad in the fall of the year to a logging site 60 miles back into the bush south of Hinton Alberta. I was 8 years old at the time and we were hauling a CAT bulldozer on a lowboy trailer. The trip began the same as it often did with the packing of the “trucker’s lunch.” This consisted of making sandwiches with a full loaf of bread, a package of processed meat and some Pop Shop Soda. At 8 years old I thought I was in heaven having my very own
Jackie & Jason Koch “trucker’s lunch”. As we made our way through the bush up and down the logging roads we soon began to see the Alberta snow begin to fall. In preparation for what he knew was to come, Dad chained up both sets of drive axles, the steer axle and put a tag chain on the trailer. I had no idea what was about to take place but Dad seemed calm like this was nothing new to him. Within 30 minutes we were driving through 6 inches of freshly fallen wet snow. As we went up the hills the old Ford began to shake violently and hop
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and I was beyond scared at this point so I climbed underneath the bunk and hid. Dad, on the other hand, remained calm and was always in control of the truck. When I asked my Dad why the truck was shaking and hoping so badly he replied that the truck was spinning its wheels even with the chains on. We finally arrived safely at the camp, unloaded the CAT, then drove back to the highway without incident. It was right about then and there that I decided I wanted to be a truck driver. I knew that with the skills that my Dad would teach me, and others I would pick up along the way, I would be able to face almost anything. My Dad later stopped hauling crude oil and started Triple J Transport which was a small fleet of 11 trucks with flat decks that he used to haul new RVs from the U.S. into Alberta. Over the next 10 years, I spent every free moment learning everything and anything I could about driving and maintaining the trucks from my Dad and my Uncle Florian, who was also an owner/operator with Gibsons. The drivers didn’t want to do the day to day maintenance they just wanted to be able to hop in and leave or drop them off and go home after there trips so I made sure everything was ready for them. I washed trucks, did oil changes, grease jobs, replaced deck boards, made sure all the straps and binders were in good shape. I also helped with repairs and did some fabrication when necessary. While I was in school I took courses that would help me in the business
like bookkeeping and mechanics. I actively helped with organizing and maintaining the trucks and drivers until I was old enough to drive myself. I was impatient when in school and just wanted to get it over with and graduate as quickly as possible so that I could go trucking. In order to do that I jammed as many credits as possible into 2 ½ years. This allowed me to graduate ½ a year early in December. I only had to go back the following June for the graduation ceremony. When I turned 18 and graduated from high school, I immediately went to work for my Dad running new RV units from Elkhart, Indiana to Edmonton. When I first took my Class 1 exam I failed for, as the instructor said, being overly confident with the truck. I had driven a lot with my dad thru places like Chicago and was not using the clutch to change gears and reached high range while in town which he thought was being too aggressive. I was forced to wait for 2 days to take it again and after making the necessary adjustments he requested during my road test I passed without a problem! My Dad and Mom lived in Las Vegas NV and Edmonton AB and my parents were snowbirds so each year I spent about 6 months a year in Edmonton and 6 months in Vegas. I went to school in Edmonton but whenever it was closed like Christmas and Spring breaks, or summer holidays we would head to Vegas. One big plus from going back and forth so often was that it was no big deal for me to cross the border when I started
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trucking. Triple J Transport was a family run business. My Mom, Judy Koch, organized and maintained the company books and was also responsible for driver recruitment. My Dad did the dispatching and business management and fabrication of trailers this while still getting behind the wheel himself when needed. We had uncles and nephews who drove and worked with us as well. This is where I realized the importance of having a family who works together to contribute to the success of a trucking business. While I could drive commercially in Canada, I was not 21 so I was not legal age to drive in the U.S. which was not a problem for the longest time. Then one day just 3 months short of my 21st birthday an older fellow at the scale in Minot, North Dakota pulled me in for a routine inspection. This was something he had done before as I knew him from crossing that scale many times in the past. I guess he hadn’t paid attention in the past or looked close enough because this time when he looked at my log book and then my driver’s license he suddenly realized I was underage to be interstate trucking. He was a bit embarrassed about missing it so many times before but he had no intention of letting me continue. He pointed at the truck stop across the road and told me I could wait there until someone with a class 1 who was of legal age could come down and pick up my truck and return it to Canada where I could them resume my trip. He then swept the whole thing under the rug by telling me he would not
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charge me but I was not to come back until I was 21. It saved me a ticket and him the embarrassment of explaining to his superiors why in the previous inspections he did not catch my age long before that. I have been involved in two unfortunate accidents over the years. After I turned 21 and started driving in the States again I got hit by a drunk driver on Hwy 52 just south of Bowbells North Dakota. A woman came out of her driveway at the bottom of the valley crossed three lanes of traffic hitting me head-on in the right shoulder of the northbound lane and took out my front end. My truck rolled over into the ditch and finally came to rest about 10 feet from the river at the bottom of the valley. The cops told me that she was the town drunk and it was inevitable that this was to happen eventually as she survived with minor injuries. My second accident was just a rooky mistake of my own fault. It was in the fall of 2009 and I had already hit a couple deer that year and after paying for the repairs out of pocket I wasn’t looking to have to do that again so I swerved to miss what would have been my third deer and my tires caught on the right shoulder of the highway, pulled me in, and I flopped my truck on its side. Since that embarrassment, I have driven 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometres) accidentfree. I have never been afraid to admit past mistakes as I feel that’s the only way one can move forward, keep learning, and strive to never repeat them. There was a girl I met in grade 7 that lived close to me and we always walked to and from school together. We were best friends all through junior high and high school and then 3 years after graduating, in February 1999, I married my longtime friend and love of my life, Jackie. After we got married we started our own company, Iceman Refrigeration, hauling produce for companies such as Sobeys, Western Grocers, and Sysco. I went back to long-haul trucking and Jackie learned how to do the books and run for parts. We purchased our first new Peterbilt, a 1998 379 with a 550 CAT engine accompanied by a 1998 Utility 2000R trailer with a Carrier refrigeration unit equipped with printable Temptale and the Datalink communication system. The trailer was decorated with matching airbrushed murals on both sides as well as designs on the Pete including a piece featuring Marvin the Martian shooting Bugs Bunny in the rear with his laser gun. When you added in all of the stainless-steel and chrome pieces inside and out and a one-of-a-kind 24 karat gold plated dash it made this a pretty fancy ride. The result of this, much to Jackie’s dismay, sparked my love of customized equipment. Over the next decade, we had many ups and downs while we learned about owning and growing our company and working with two great outfits, Ralcan Holdings Inc owned by Ralph and Karen Hunter and H&R Transport Ltd. In that time we expanded to 10 trucks, 6 Peterbilts (3 Legacy Editions) and 4 Volvos. We also had 15 Great Dane and Utility reefer trailers with Thermo King Whisper Edition units. This all came about with the help of my Mom, my Dad and my younger brother Jerrid who I mentored and who still works
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with us to this day. In amongst all of the “chaos,” we had expanded our family with 2 daughters and a puppy named Thor. Our daughters were both born in St. Albert Alberta. The oldest Lorelai was born in September 2002 and the youngest Jaylyn was born in April 2006. We then moved to Lethbridge where we joined H&R in 2008. After 15 years of owning the company, it came to the point where Jackie and I had to make an important decision. We could either grow larger in order to meet customer demands and comply with Electronic Logging Device requirements, which by the way I personally don’t feel make our industry any safer. In fact, I think it does the opposite by asking people to race an unforgiving clock every day. Or we could downsize and try something new. We chose to downsize to two trucks, one for me and one for my brother Jerrid. This allowed me to spend more time as a family with the girls. I took our company back to my Dad’s roots as a tanker hauler and was blessed to join the Liquids In Motion team owned by Eldon Frandrick. This revitalized my love for trucking. Liquids In Motion also embraced my obsessivecompulsive nature and love for shiny equipment by providing some of the nicest trailers and equipment and hauling for some of the best chemical companies in the industry. I have said many times to family and friends that I have purchased my last truck and I know we’ve all heard the “this is my last truck” line before which normally doesn’t turn out to be true but personally, I really can’t see myself buying
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www.sunrisetransport.com another one. With the new push for zero-emission trucks and all of the aerodynamics, the unreliability and costly inefficient operating systems of the new trucks I am pretty sure that it makes it likely this statement will remain true for this family. My 2010 Pete 389 with ISX565, 18 speed with 3:55 gear ratio and Super 40 rear ends has run 2.4 million kilometres and counting. It is appropriately named Redemption - because of my last accident - and can handle almost anything that has and will be thrown at it work-wise. I strive to keep it in impeccable condition and really appreciate the comments and thumbs up I get for the way it looks. This combined with being blessed to have a wife who has stood by me through everything and made me a proud father of two beautiful girls is what keeps me driven to keep learning and adapting to this craft. It keeps me striving daily to make safe trips and be a positive representative of the trucking industry to the best of my ability. It is frustrating when people have a negative view of truckers and our profession, this is not a mindless job. It’s being away from your family and missing special moments in your life that you wish you could be there for while providing goods that’s allow others to remain with their families. The upside is you can go out and earn the income that allows your family to enjoy many of the things they may not have otherwise. It’s long lonely days and nights, making loading and
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unloading appointments, driving in adverse conditions being the safest and most professional you can be. It’s pride in your ride and what it means to be able to reflect that for your company who has taken the chance in hiring you to represent them.
mILe AFTer mILe By Cyn Tobin Cyn has been driving trucks for 34 years. She has hauled loads all across North America and specializes in expedited perishable freight.
Everybody has a horror story to tell about an encounter they’ve had with an 18-wheeler aka, semi-truck on the highways, and how they were nearly killed by the inattentiveness of the truck driver. News programs like Dateline NBC and 60 Minutes feed this fear with selectively edited stories regarding truck safety. But what nobody seems to consider is that they themselves may have caused the problem because of ignorance regarding what is involved with driving a truck, or by engaging in righteous driving behaviour that did nothing but endanger their own lives and those of the people they care most about. We, as truck drivers all have family members on the roadways. Whether its mother, father, sibling, cousins, kids etc... Safety is a huge concern as we see firsthand the arrogance and at many times the results of a rash hurried decision by a four-wheeler. Most often, the lack of either common sense
or knowledge leads to poor choices. As professionals, we try to ensure our families have the best first-hand knowledge of road safety. We all know someone out there whether it be family or friend who may not be as educated about driving around trucks as they should be. If we all pass these few simple steps onto someone, we can only request they share it with a friend etc ...and ultimately hope, changes in aggressive and poor choice driving habits change. Safety is for us all...the roads are the common shared ground where we all have one purpose...to get to where we are going...Safely. Personally, I’ve seen rude truckers hog the road, and I’ve seen dimwitted 4 wheel drivers set themselves up for what could be a very painful, if not deadly, lesson. Furthermore, not all trucks travelling the nation’s highways are properly maintained, due to a lack of finances or pure laziness and/or ignorance. Assuming they are all well maintained can be a very deadly mistake. For most, truck drivers who are paid by the mile or load, are held responsible for damaged goods, their lives and livelihoods depend on driving a well-maintained truck carefully, and getting freight to and from its destination undamaged and on time. Tractor trailer trucks are responsible for carrying nearly 60 percent of all the cargo shipped in Canada. Technology and improved roadways have allowed the use of trucks for shipping to increase steadily since the 1920s, resulting in larger vehicles and heavier loads. Yet, traffic fatalities involving trucks had steadily declined during the past 50 years, except for a small spike upward in the early 1980s right after the trucking industry was deregulated. Until recently. Fatalities in North America, due to accidents involving semi trucks
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total around 5500 (a guesstimate based on numbers in 2015) annually on average, with the vast majority of those fatalities suffered by occupants of passenger vehicles that collided with a truck. Ontario alone has seen an over 800% increase in semi truck-related crashes alone in 2018. (This being many factors that we will not get into today. Another story) Motorists who must share the road with semi trucks can do their part to help reduce this number even further if they simply take the time to follow a few simple driving rules and try to assist their fellow general public to understand how difficult it is to maneuver a tractor-trailer in traffic. A few common deadly mistakes many make without knowing... 1) Riding in a trucker’s blind spots. Trucks have large blind spots to the right and rear of the vehicle. Smaller blind spots exist on the right front corner and mid-left side of the truck. The worst thing a driver can do is chug along in the trucker’s blind spot, where he cannot be seen. If you’re going to pass a truck, do it and get it over with. Don’t sit alongside with the cruise control set 1 mph faster than the truck is travelling. 2) Cut-offs. Don’t try to sneak into a small gap in traffic ahead of a truck. Don’t get in front of a truck and then brake to make a turn. Trucks take as much as three times the distance to stop as the average passenger car, and you’re only risking your own life by cutting a truck off and then slowing down in front of it. When you look in your vehicle’s rearview mirror... don’t cut in front of that truck until you can see over the top of the roof of the truck. A few provinces have incorporated the left lane travel law.
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A very misunderstood law at best. Most trucks naturally will ride the right lane. However when the truck is constantly having to hit brakes, slow and speed up for merging and lane cutting traffic, or being forced to do below the posted limits by those incapable of maintaining a decent speed...will indeed travel the left lane as permitted by law if passing the rights traffic. Especially these new fandangled trucks that require five car lengths to travel and twice as many lengths to pass. 3) Impatience while reversing. Motorists need to understand that it takes time and concentration to back a 53-foot trailer up without hitting anything. Sometimes a truck driver needs to make several attempts to reverse into tight quarters. Keep your cool and let the trucker do her/his job. 4) Don’t play policeman. Don’t try to make a truck driver conform to a bureaucrat’s idea of what is right and wrong on the highway. As an example, is the way truck drivers handle hilly terrain on the highway. A fully loaded truck slows way down going up a hill. On the way down the other side of the hill, a fully loaded truck gathers speed quickly. Truckers like to use that speed to help the truck up the next hill. Do not sit in the passing lane going the speed limit. Let the truck driver pass, and let the Authorities worry about citing the trucker for breaking the law. 5) No assistance in lane changes or merges. It’s not easy to get a 22 - foot tractor and 53 - foot trailer into traffic easily. If a trucker has his turn signal blinking, leave room for the truck to merge or change lanes. Indicate your willingness to allow the truck in by flashing your lights. Not your high beams as they will cause momentary blindness for the trucker looking
OctObEr 2018
PRO-TRUCKER MAGAZINE
back in his mirror to ensure a safe lane change. Some of the leading causes of truck-related crashes: 1) Crashes caused by the truck’s inability to stop in time. Many 4 wheelers who cut trucks off and brake suddenly for whatever reason.... do not survive if impacted. 2) Crashes caused by a motorist trying to pass a truck on the right while the truck is making a right-hand turn. Also known as the right turn squeeze. 3) Crashes caused by a motorist riding in the trucker’s blind spots. Use the following rule of thumb: If you cannot see the truck driver in his mirrors, he probably cannot see you. 4) Following too close causes the truck driver to become distracted while trying to determine just what you’re going to do. Taking simple common-sense steps to protect yourself and your family when driving near large trucks, should assist in assuring your safety. Over the years, the trucking industry has improved the quality of trucks with enhanced safety features. Most semi trucks are speed limited to about 10 to 30 km below posted limits. Most cars travel in excess of posted limits. Making us all more frustrated as we go along. Mile after Mile... The car believes the trucks are a hindrance and should not impede their current speeds. All the while the trucker just wants by the 4 wheeler who he sees impeding him. Patience is required by all. We all have somewhere to be. Still, the trucker has a monumental task in operating one of these units safely with now brighter lights coming at him, increased populations, and speed of the “me first” generation. Still, more work must be done to combat tightly scheduled deliveries, overbearing stacks of paperwork and driver fatigue caused by federal regulations that work against the human
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body’s natural circadian rhythm. For example, during a 30-minute ride through Edmonton Alberta, the following occurred, two motorists turned left across traffic directly in front of the truck. One young woman in a Toyota Celica crossed no more than 50 feet in front of us as she zoomed onto a side street. An older couple in a Dodge Grand Caravan turned in front of our Volvo tractor, and incredibly, slowed so they wouldn’t scrape the van on a steep driveway apron to a convenience store. A dude in a Camaro RS blasted by on the left, cut in front of the truck and stopped at a red light we were approaching. When the light turned green, he turned right. These are the kinds of driving habits that we must break for truck-related accident rates to drop lower. After a day with an instructor from a local truck driving school, I received the following note, “ We left Calgary for Vancouver in a Subaru Outback. During that evening and the next day travelling highways 5 and 1, we were keenly aware of the needs of the truckers with whom we shared the road. We behaved more courteously toward truck drivers and fellow motorists than usual and exercised more patience. We doubt very much that by driving more defensively and less aggressively we arrived in Vancouver any sooner than we would have had we not let that Kenworth into our lane back in Golden or had we tried to beat that Freightliner to the construction zone near Salmon Arm. We do feel, however, that our trip was a safer one, that we had done our part to make highway travel better. Now it’s time for everyone to do theirs.” Fate Shows when Least Expected.
deLIverInG The Goods, sAFeLy By Lane Kranenburg Lane is a former driver, fleet owner and former Executive Director of the AMTA Truckers, How do You Feel? Truckers health will be the focus of a study being conducted by the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Public Health. The focus will be on the long-haul trucker, specifically studying health and wellness, lifestyle, and working conditions. Dr. Alexander Crizzle faculty member of the School of Public Health is leading this effort and has been interested in road safety for some time. Crizzle hopes to have approximately 400 drivers participate. With the average age of drivers climbing every year it will be interesting to see the results of this study and I find the most interesting part of this study is working conditions such as sitting behind the wheel for hours at a time. As well as access to poor food, lack of exercise, fatigue and obesity all contribute to the health of a trucker. Questions asked at this study will be about electronic logs, parking and rest areas, access to food, truck driver training and even issues related to marijuana use. I think studies like this should have taken place a long time ago considering
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these gentlemen drive these huge units on our highways. In the late 1990’s I was involved with a study on fatigue where we went right into the kitchens of our drivers and talked to their wives, where we got the real stories behind the professionals behind the wheel. This study resulted in identifying the sleep issues of drivers and we found a percentage of drivers suffered from sleep apnea and treatment was made available to those affected. This fatigue study resulted in a course on fatigue management and although efforts were made to have the trucking industry adopt this program to all truckers, the industry failed to adopt this excellent fatigue management program as mandatory therefore it is being offered on the web to our industry. When I drove in the 1970’s I found that access to proper facilities to allow the driver to pull over and rest were practically non-existent, and that has not changed and here it is 2018 that is nearly fifty years that industry has been requesting the transportation department to do something about this important safety issue. In the mid-1990’s I was approached by an engineer in the transportation department of our Provincial Government and we established where rest areas for truckers should be, however, no action was taken. As a driver, I found that fatigue was a huge issue and the hours that we could drive was a contributing factor. Any healthy food had to be brought from home as the restaurant food was very unhealthy and now because of parking limita-
NEW Extended Hours Mon-Fri 8 am- Midnight • Sat 8 am- 5pm tion for trucks it is very difficult for a driver to even access. Black coffee and a hot hamburger sandwich were breakfast lunch and dinner, and with little or no exercise one can see why I was not the healthiest person on the road. Rest, a healthy diet, exercise and a good family relationship are vitally important, and those things sound easy, but one must be knowledgeable about long distance drivers to appreciate the difficulty in establishing a regular routine to accomplish the foregoing. My respect for the professional truck driver is high because I have experienced driving and know how really demanding it can be. So, in a nutshell, a driver must rest, exercise, eat healthily, keep their spouse happy, sounds easy but it is not because
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schedules are not always conducive to the foregoing, road food is not usually healthy, and exercise is limited due to serious time restraints, being home when the partner wants attention is nearly impossible so one must do the very best he or she can. Although driving is a tough occupation, I found it to be rewarding on several fronts, meeting and dealing with new people and driving to destinations that have their own unique points of interest. We as drivers sometimes fail to take advantage of opportunities as the focus is on getting to the destination and then right back to our business. There must be time for you as a driver to take better care yourself and that includes exercise, stopping to rest and reload while checking your rig for any signs of fatigue, tire pressures, fifth wheel and other connections. This is a great time to walk around and stretch and take in where you are stopped. This industry has more persons working than any other in Canada, and with more and more things being added to make the driver more comfortable and safer it should start to attract more people. There are continued efforts underway to recognize this occupation as “skilled” and that should attract more people. Our ageing driving force, and the lack of initiative by industry and government to educate people about the benefit of this occupation. We are nearing crisis levels with the shortage of drivers and we must educate upcoming people about the benefits of being a driver.
to have in the truck. If you wind up stranded DO NOT Leave, Stay in your vehicle unless you are in imminent danger ie: if caught in an avalanche you are better off in the vehicle it will provide you shelter and somebody will find you when they open the road. If you are in the market for a new winter coat I strongly recommend a high visibility jacket you need a new one anyway so why not buy one that makes you more visible since the days are now getting shorter. Now is a good time to also take a look at your flashlight in case you need new batteries. Make sure you are stopping often and cleaning the snow out of all the tail lights as well as cleaning the conspicuity tape to ensure you are being seen in the inclement weather. A good habit to get into is flag this and note a light cleaning in your logbook, should you ever be in an accident you can prove due diligence that you do stop regularly to clean your lights. Stay safe and warm till next time
Driving Through my Memories
By Ed Murdoch
Ed has held a commercial drivers license for 65 years and has spent the better part of 50 years on the road. You can get Ed’s new book at www.drivingthroughmymemories.ca
By Dave Howard Dave Howard has been a Truck Driver, Armoured Truck Driver, and Alberta CVSE. He returned to driving truck because as he says, “The call of the road was too strong and in 2007 I left CVE and crossed over to the dark side or came to the light depending on who you talk to.” He now drives, “The Great Pumpkin.”
As I was driving through my memories the other day … an activity in which many of us older drivers indulge on occasion, and I thought about all the moves I and the families to whom I belonged from time to time experienced in order to be nearer the job. You will no doubt be a bit surprised at the diversity of the jobs I have had over my career, and while I often held down more than one at a time, truck driving was always one of them. Preparing For Winter In the very early days as an unmarried skinner, I moved Well I hate to bring it up but the frost is in the air and since we talked about Tire chains last month we better get from Toronto to Kirkland Lake where my squeeze of the day, and the mother of my three offspring, was teaching school, ourselves ready for winter I can’t stress this enough and the Boy Scouts put it so but the ergo- and eco-nomics of the arrangement dictated I move all the way to Winnipeg for my first long-haul job. eloquently”Be Prepared” In the winter months we should have at least 5 days of Then it was off to North Bay while attending Teachers’ food and bottled water with us at all times, keep nuts and College and back to Toronto, wife in tow, for work in my high protein bars in the truck, they don’t take up a lot of fields of endeavour, teaching, music and trucking. During that time, while attempting to manage two room and you never know how long you could be stranded. So let’s prepare ahead of time and there is no time like diametrically opposed professions, the musical focus being classically oriented, we moved to Long Branch at the foot of the present I have a hockey bag that is my winter gear bag, it contains Hwy. 27 west of Toronto. We bought a house in Brampton the following: insulated winter coveralls, toque, scarf, insu- and sold it within 2 years to move to Newmarket, ON. While lated gloves, as well as mitts and my winter snow boots. It there I taught music and natural science while pursuing paid also contains a large candle and waterproof matches that you gigs as a singer in the Toronto classical music scene and running the odd trip for friends with rigs. can use to stay warm if the truck quits. My teaching position became too restrictive so we moved I put my protein bars and nuts in a plastic container that fits into my bag so I don’t snack on them and wind up in to Willowdale, just north of TO so that I would be closer trouble if I’m stuck in a storm. Beef jerky is also a nice item to both trucking and musical activities. That lasted until PAGE 30
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the feds cut funds for the arts and I became a permanent, full-time long-haul double-clutchin’, whisky drinkin, pillpoppin’, wimmin chasin’ Son of a Gun. We bought a home in Holland Landing near Bradford as I had returned to hauling produce from Canada’s breadbasket to exotic destinations on both sides of the border including Ottawa, Montréal, New York, Boston, Scranton, Philadelphia and Baltimore and many other communities, returning to Canada with loads of bananas from the docks in New Jersey, New York, Baltimore and Charleston. A brief stint in the life insurance business went sour followed by a steel hauling stretch that led to me running back west again and requiring a move to Barrie right on the transportation routes leading to the north and west. Following a few happy years there while hauling steel on a C-train and paper products across the nation more moves were completed for various reasons but mostly following the money. A move to Jackson’s Point was next where I was able to purchase cheap fuel but the cottage we were leasing by Lake Simcoe had water and heating issues and we reentered civilization with the purchase of a townhouse in Thornhill where our kids spent their formative school years developing into bright, productive and active young adults. I continued trucking and singing and astonishingly never once missed, or was even late for a music rehearsal or gig and I delivered my cargo on time too. Hamilton came next when I reentered the freight business as an owner-operator again, but with the stress of child raising and career changes and teaching oppression and suppression, my wife struggled with addictions and we separated and ultimately divorced. Sad indeed, for she was a brilliant and sensitive tutor for children with special needs and a talented musician in her own right. Fortunately today she’s clean and enjoying watching our grandchildren grow into mature active adults, one as a teacher, the other as a doctor. Regina SK called me so I could be with a partner I had become close to when she was a hostess at the 5th Wheel TS in Cornwall, ON but had moved to the Queen City to take on a new career as a nanny. We renewed our brief nonrelationship, she took a course in commercial driving, we were married in Richmond, BC in 1988 and merrily drove off into the sunset. By the late ‘80s we had suffered financial losses in two businesses due to a poor economic environment in the province at that time so we ultimately moved to the North Okanagan where we have thrived for the past 28 years enjoying friends, family, nature, many challenges but more often more successes than failures. Of course, for 50 or more of those years, I/we were also living in our truck(s) which could have been situated at any given moment anywhere within the four corners of North America, including Alaska. The together time in the truck was wonderful and we encourage other couples who have the OctObEr 2018
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Call Al 604-882-7623 opportunity to well … GO FOR IT! It’s been a slice, a real blast, a tremendous learning experience, exciting, full of surprises, happiness, sadness and all the other emotions but I would not have missed any of the diversity, adventure, silliness, seriousness, ups, downs, you name it … it was all there. There are naturally a few things I would have preferred not to have taken place but the overwhelming majority of participation in the journey has been rewarding and pleasant. And we’re not quite finished, getting closer but not yet at that final destination. Put away the Kleenex and stay tuned! Be safe out there, y’hear! Slow down a bit and enjoy … and do I really have to say it … NO DISTRACTIONS! Statistics and all indications have led to the discovery that the use of hands-free communication is distracting too unless the person with whom one is chatting is another set of eyes in the cab of the truck with you. No, I do not make these things up. I look them up instead ... once I’m stopped … 10-4! *****
Mistaken Identity
When the light turned yellow in front of him, the man stopped at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. A tailgating woman was furious. She honked her horn, screamed in frustration and flipped him the bird. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very seri-ous police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a po-liceman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday school’ bumper sticker, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, ....I assumed you had stolen the car.” r
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