The Truckers Lair

Hauled a load of casing to Dimsdale, Alberta and then drove empty to Edmonton after unloading.  The drive was good with road conditions alright.  I decided to take hwy. 40 after hearing on the big radio that it was bare and dry.  However, I found out that there was some slippery sections on some corners that they forgot to tell me about.  At one point I thought I was going to slide off a corner and I was only doing 80 km/hr.  Slept at Grand Cache and then headed out for Grand Prairie in the morning.  Got stuck behind a wide load that could only manage about 20-30 km/hr up most of the hills.  This cost me about 45 minutes but I finally got around him.  Dimsdale is about 20 minutes west of Grand Prairie so it didn’t take long to find it.  After arriving in Edmonton to wait for my next load home I discovered that my turbo seal between the exhaust manifold and the turbo was leaking worse than before I left.  I couldn’t leave the truck running at night.  The temps in Edmonton were plus 4 so it didn’t matter until I got to Valemount, BC on the way home where it was minus 8.  I woke up a little cold but the extra quilt I got from mom for xmas helped immensely.  I have an appointment on Monday to get it fixed so I will be able to breathe a little easier and sleep with heat in the future.  Bye for now.

Wow, did I ever run into some wind between Edson Alberta and Jasper Alberta.  I was hauling a load of foam back after delivering another load of pipe to Edmonton.  The wind was so strong it shifted my load over to one side about 4 inches.  After cinching it down again I headed for Vancouver to deliver.  Along the way I ran into a snow storm between Blue River, BC  and Clearwater, BC.  It was snowing pretty heavy and the roads weren’t in bad shape considering.  Foam is light so I took my time and passed three super b’s spun out on various hills.  By the time I got to Little Fort for breakfast the snow had changed to rain once again.  The highways were filthy dirty all the way to the rest area on top of the “smasher” hill on the Coquihalla where I convinced a loader operator who was moving snow around to help me straighten my load.  I have a bunch of pictures of accidents from before Xmas till now to upload when I have the time.  Bye for now.

Happy New Year to all!!  I’ve been a bit lazy in writing to this blog lately, but will try to keep up.  I’ve been hauling pipe steady back and forth from BC to Alberta and back to BC.  That is about all that is available to haul right now with the economy the way it is.  Starting to get tired of dealing with the morons that work at the ports however.  Wouldn’t be proud to say I worked there I tell you.  Bunch of fat, lazy you know whats if you ask me. 

Been a lot of snow to drive through and mud slides as well as snow slides have been closing down some roads.  Everyone is out of money apparently when it comes to clearing off the roads as they are pathetic.  Welcome to the world of privatization. 

Just a month and a half and I’ll have my truck paid off.  Whew!  I’ll be glad when that is over and done with let me tell you.  The truck has been running well (knock wood) and it is starting to burn a little oil but apparently that is normal for an older truck.   Well I’ll talk to you later.

Hooked onto another load of pipe bound for Grand Prairie, Alberta and headed out on the road.  This time I was running with another driver who had the same load.  We cut up through hwy 40 just outside of Hinton, Alberta and the road was in good shape.  After unloading our pipe we decided to fuel up and go to Mama Pandas for a buffet.  The food was excellent and I will go there again.  Unfortunately when we came out all stuffed and tired, the weather had took a turn for the worse and there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground and forty mile an hour winds.  We headed down the dreaded hwy 40 hoping we could travel the 3.5 hour drive with out much accumulation on the road.  The trip was slow but we managed to make it to Hinton, Alberta where the winds were still blowing hard but the snow was a lot lighter.  We slept that night and went to load cubed metal (appliances etc) for the back haul home.  Well this was a painful experience as the operator of the loader had no experience and since this was our first time loading this type of freight it took over six hours to load us both and tie plastic mesh over the load as is required by law.  The trip home was a nightmare as we ran into the first real snow storm of the year and only made it to Valemount, B.C. before shutting down for some sleep.  The next morning wasn’t any different other than driving in daylight instead of darkness.  The highway was attrocious from Valemount to Little Fort.  I didn’t see any plows until Avola where we seen a grader which maybe there should of been a few more working that 300 km stretch of road.  Didn’t see any accidents which was unreal considering the circumstances.  When we got to Little Fort the weather changed to rain (Whew!!) and we had clear sailing home.  Bye for now.

Hooked onto another load of pipe bound for Grand Prairie, Alberta and headed out.  The going was good and I decided to take the long way (hwy 22) instead of taking a chance on the dreaded hwy 40 which is made up of a lot of hills (roller coaster ride) and is a narrow road.  I made it to Whitecourt, Alberta before pulling into a rest stop to sleep.  There were a few snow flurries but nothing to serious.  The next morning I unloaded in Grand Prairie and headed to Fort Saint John, B.C. to load some crushed cars.  I do have a photo but forgot to upload the image to my computer so I’ll update this post later.  I had to move my fifth wheel to get my weights right as I had to get as close to 30 ton as possible for more money.  The trip home was good and the highways and weather was good also.  Unloading the crushed cars however was a painful experience as it took forever to unload and the deck of the trailer was covered in oil and didn’t clean up too easily.  Talk to you later.

Loaded up some drill pipe bound for Nisku Alberta from the docks.  It was early morning and I couldn’t resist taking a photo (see photo) of the city of Vancouver in the morning light.  Only wish I would have walked to the edge of the pier to take the shot instead of from my truck.  Headed out on the road and ran into some compact snow up on the Coquihalla but other than that the going was good until I got to Blue River where the road became icy all the way to Valemount.  From there it continued to be icy until the BC/Alta border and along the way by Moose Lake there were a couple of four wheelers in the ditch on both sides of the road within a few hundred feet of each other.  One could only surmise that maybe one of them lost control and the other one tried to avoid him/her and ended up in the ditch also. 

After arriving in Nisku it turns out that the company yard I was supposed to unload at wanted me to drive to another destination to unload, however the paperwork specified this address and since no one would guarantee payment to the other destination they were forced to unload me there.  Trying to get a delivery to a client for free I guess.  Headed back to Edmonton to get a damaged 11′ wide lowbed to haul back to Aldergrove for repairs.  The road was in better shape this time when I got to the border.  The only bad spot was between Valemount and Blue River but it was relatively small in size and the sand trucks were working the road.  Decided to take 5A between Kamloops and Merritt for a change and came accross the remnants of an accident (see photos) where it looked like a lumber truck lost it’s load the night or morning before.  Crews were stacking the lumber on the side of the road for removal as I went through.  There were two vans in front of me when we were stopped by the flag person.  The rest of the trip went smoothly enough and arrived in the yard in the afternoon.  Dropped the trailer and got ready for my next trip to Grand Prairie.  Bye for now.

Picked up two pieces of steel plate from the docks for delivery to Edmonton.  Along the way I had to load a scissor neck lowbed on top of the plate and also deliver to Edmonton.  Because of how I had to load the lowbed most of the weight was on the back end of the trailer which I wasn’t too happy about, but what can you do.  Luckily I didn’t run into any snow issues other than a little compact on top of the Coquihalla.  The drive was a good one and thank goodness as I needed a good trip after the last three.  Made my deliveries and headed to load some foam for the trip home.  Again everything was good.  Bye for now.

When I got back to the yard after dropping off the screening plant I had to hook onto a trailer loaded with a steel container bound for Gilbralter Mines by McLeese Lake.  Only being a six hour drive I figured this would be a good trip after what I’d just been through this was a blessing.  I made it too McLeese Lake and went to bed for the night.  I got up in the morning and headed up the mountain to the mine.  At the Gate, I signed in and took an orientation for safety and then discovered that no one knew where the load was to go.  Because there was no details on the paper work we broke the seal and looked inside the container.  No one could figure out what we were even looking at.  Finally someone showed up and determined that it was a kevlar box liner and harness for one of the big Uke ore trucks.  Still no one knew where to take it.  Meanwhile three hours had passed.  I called my dispatch and he called his contacts and finally a person in charge showed up to take me further up the mountain to a crane that was putting together a huge shovel for digging out the ore from the ground.  Once up there, I found out that they were just going to unload the container from the trailer and not empty it.  I phoned dispatch and was told that no one was to unload the container from the trailer as the container had to be returned back to the docks by Monday morning or someone would have to pay the 200 dollars a day late fees.  It seems that the mine had sent their crane operator home earlier that morning and didn’t want to pay the contractor rates to use the crane mentioned previously to unload the container as it was determined to probably take 4 hours to unload (meanwhile I’d been there already six hours).  I waited for three more hours while the powers that be came up with a plan on what to do with this container and finally I was told by my dispatch that I was going to take it to Quesnel about an hour up the highway from McLeese Lake.  At that point I didn’t care as long as I got it off.  At the gate, the security guard wouldn’t let me  leave as he had orders to not let my truck and trailer go loaded.  He made a phone call and confirmed that I could leave (hooray).  Got to Quesnel and unloaded inside a building with an overhead crane which only took two more hours.  Finally got home the next day in time to take my truck in for its semi annual MVI.  It passed with flying colors, the best news I’d had in a while.  Bye for now.

Well I headed up to Fort Nelson to pick up the screening plant that I delivered in August and paid for an overweight permit based on the same weights as when I hauled it up there.  Needless to say that was a mistake as when I got up there it was filthy dirty and covered in ice and snow.  I had the client clean the tracks and most of the mud off of it before I hooked on and headed for town.  It was about one hour out of Fort Nelson in the helmut oil field area.  When I got to town I drove accross the scale to confirm my weights and wouldn’t you know it they weren’t even close (51,000kg).  Both hoppers were about one third full of snow and ice ( or so I thought) and because it was minus 10 degrees celcius I wasn’t going to get rid of that to easy.  I decided to go for lunch with my best friend Dan whom I hadn’t seen in a few months at the local pub.  After lunch we went to see a good friend of Dan’s to see if he would weld some mud flap brackets back on the end of the screening plant that hadn’t been replaced since I took it up there.  When I got to my truck and the screening plant I noticed that someone had stolen my tool box that I’d stupidly left on my jockey box.  After getting the mud flaps taken care of I bid Dan goodbye and headed for Fort Saint John to use the scale there to see if the weights were the same in case the scale in Fort Nelson was out a bit.  Crossing the scale in Fort Saint John I found out the weights were the same so I spent another 70 bucks on top of the original 178 to upgrade the overweight permit.  Oh did I foget to mention that I forgot the light bar for the back and had to buy some magnetic lights from Canadian Tire to have brake lights etc.  Spent the night in Fort Saint John and headed out in the late morning after buying another set of lights and realigning the conveyor belt on the passenger side that broke loose and was sticking too far out from the screening plant.  By the time I got to Prince George it was snowing pretty good and I went accross the scale with no problems (yeah).  Decided to stop and do a load check and sure enough the lights weren’t working.  After testing the circuit on the screening plant plug I determined that there was a broken wire somewhere and I wasn’t wasting my time tracking it down.  I took a taxi to Canadian Tire and bought 120ft of trailer wire and wired it right to my tractor.  The weather changed when I got to Quesnel and I decided to spend the night at a pullout between Quesnel and McLeese Lake.  The temperature had warmed up considerably to plus 5.  In the morning when I did my pretrip I noticed mud and ice all over the ground under the two hoppers so I climbed up to take a look and low and behold the snow and ice had melted to leave one third of a hopper full of mud and rocks in both.  No wonder my weights were up they forgot to empty the unit (or maybe they didn’t).  In any case I headed forward and was glad to get home.  Bye for now.

What a week! After spending the weekend in Edmonton, I went to load on  Monday and discovered the load was too high with dunnage and I had to sit it on the deck and because it was two sections of a conveyor for a gravel pit, I had to sit the top section on the lower section (metal to metal).  I didn’t feel comfortable with this so I cross chained the lower section to the deck and chained the upper section to the lower section in the middle so it couldn’t slide.  I had to stop frequently to tighten all the straps and boomers as it kept shifting on me.  Finally made it though after driving through some snow flurries here and there.  It was snowing pretty heavy over the Coquihalla from the old toll booth to the snow shed, but wasn’t sticking to the road as of yet.  Tonight will probably be a nightmare.  Glad I’m not going to be up there driving in it.  Got to load some lumber wrap and a booster tomorrow for Edmonton delivery and then it is off to Fort Nelson to pick up a portable screening plant I delivered in August.  That will be an interesting ride this time of year.  Bye for now.