Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Bemidji, MN
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Anybody want anything from Ontario?
- Thread starter Chicken lights
- Start date
Well within striking distance of Duluth now!
https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/Grav...c8df095e306!2m2!1d-94.8826861!2d47.471573!3e0
historicalarms
Ultra Member
Letts go heavy-hauling in the Ab. oilpatch in the early to mid 70's.
First of all the readers have to realize that this was before the aforementioned log book regulations or any regularly scheduled Commercial vehicle in safety inspections (CVIS stickers, Chicken will know all about these). In all heavy haulers of the time, there were four things that were important to us...first & foremost was equipment durability, safety was included here but was of small consideration compared to durability of the iron...those machines had to be able to withstand the abuse of hundreds of miles of just bush road dozer trails for days on end sometimes carrying 200,000 lbs or more... we were so busy that we didn't have time to fix junk...a common statement heard back then was " if it cant stand the pace ,we'll have a new one here tomorrow"...expense was not even a consideration. More on the trucks later.
The second consideration in order of importance was to "not be $hit-faced drunk during the day...work needed to be done when it needed to be done!. Not saying that a drink of whiskey or beer to wash the hair out from between your teeth from the night before was frowned upon in the least, just being sh!tfaced behind the wheel was an unwritten rule that nobody ever crossed...if a guy did he would be changing tires for a living for the rest of his life, he was unemployable as a driver forever.
Third consideration in importance was partying & getting Sh!t faced at every opportunity. We were young, making lots of money and every peeler bar between Indian Cabins and Nisku ( The Airliner Motor Inn was "the place" to find your buddies) were the main center of "Safety Meetings" where we all gathered waiting for dispatch's.
Fourth...and a distant fourth from the previous 3 was sleep. Life with unending of work and no log books is a world completely foreign to Chicken Lights. We went days and days with little or no sleep. The longest stretch I can remember personally was 4 1/2 days with 4 hrs sleep. Another driver (Billy R, lots more about him later) and I left Nisku on a Monday morning , dispatched to a new silver mine in NWT (Cadelac Mine, 5 ranges deep in the MacKenzie Mountains). and got back Friday afternoon, we stopped for two hours at the mine to unload and a meal and then asked to "leave immediately" as the yard was becoming contested with other trucks from the flat land. We stopped at a Manning motel to shower and sleep 4 hrs and then back to Nisku.. Eating was the same as sleep, wherever possible if it didn't interfere with our schedule, sometimes at a rig or sysmic camp or more usually a loaf of bread & a tube of "pony pr!ck (garlic sausage).
The "freedoms we had on the road back then, Chicken can only dream of these days.
First of all the readers have to realize that this was before the aforementioned log book regulations or any regularly scheduled Commercial vehicle in safety inspections (CVIS stickers, Chicken will know all about these). In all heavy haulers of the time, there were four things that were important to us...first & foremost was equipment durability, safety was included here but was of small consideration compared to durability of the iron...those machines had to be able to withstand the abuse of hundreds of miles of just bush road dozer trails for days on end sometimes carrying 200,000 lbs or more... we were so busy that we didn't have time to fix junk...a common statement heard back then was " if it cant stand the pace ,we'll have a new one here tomorrow"...expense was not even a consideration. More on the trucks later.
The second consideration in order of importance was to "not be $hit-faced drunk during the day...work needed to be done when it needed to be done!. Not saying that a drink of whiskey or beer to wash the hair out from between your teeth from the night before was frowned upon in the least, just being sh!tfaced behind the wheel was an unwritten rule that nobody ever crossed...if a guy did he would be changing tires for a living for the rest of his life, he was unemployable as a driver forever.
Third consideration in importance was partying & getting Sh!t faced at every opportunity. We were young, making lots of money and every peeler bar between Indian Cabins and Nisku ( The Airliner Motor Inn was "the place" to find your buddies) were the main center of "Safety Meetings" where we all gathered waiting for dispatch's.
Fourth...and a distant fourth from the previous 3 was sleep. Life with unending of work and no log books is a world completely foreign to Chicken Lights. We went days and days with little or no sleep. The longest stretch I can remember personally was 4 1/2 days with 4 hrs sleep. Another driver (Billy R, lots more about him later) and I left Nisku on a Monday morning , dispatched to a new silver mine in NWT (Cadelac Mine, 5 ranges deep in the MacKenzie Mountains). and got back Friday afternoon, we stopped for two hours at the mine to unload and a meal and then asked to "leave immediately" as the yard was becoming contested with other trucks from the flat land. We stopped at a Manning motel to shower and sleep 4 hrs and then back to Nisku.. Eating was the same as sleep, wherever possible if it didn't interfere with our schedule, sometimes at a rig or sysmic camp or more usually a loaf of bread & a tube of "pony pr!ck (garlic sausage).
The "freedoms we had on the road back then, Chicken can only dream of these days.
Last edited:
historicalarms
Ultra Member
Nope got nothing to do with the derailments...the first nations are protesting & blockading a few crossings so they stopped all rail traffic across Canada.
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
That bridge is way too cool!
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
They had a polar bear plunge, so they had all these big blocks of ice littered all over. A couple locals were building a wall with them, I wandered over to see what was going on. Somehow got myself roped into helping build that.
Which, didn’t take much arm twisting
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Yes, sir!!
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
The aquarium was cool!
A sturgeon, a turtle fossil and a little painted turtle named Squirrel.
The history of great lakes ecology and fish species is interesting. The sturgeon are a very very old fish, one of the few who thrive in Superior.
https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/Grav...76eb580c72!2m2!1d-92.1004852!2d46.7866719!3e0
What's the plan for getting back to Gravenhurst?
What's the plan for getting back to Gravenhurst?
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
There isn’t one yet. Probably gonna go find some hot water for the driver
historicalarms
Ultra Member
Nice Photo's Chicken, one thing I regret is not having many photo's of the guys or places we visited in my trucking life...no cell /digital stuff back then.
One short trip that had lasting lifelong consequences.
Four of us left Nisku loaded with nice clean 4-chains apiece loads of Sysmic drill equipment one morning. I will use first names and last initials to keep the boys identifiable to you. Lance J had a Nodwell fuel service machine, Billy R and myself each carried a Nodwell with charge hole drill apparatus and Billy S carried an empty fuel tank on Nodwell tracks. These machines were going into a Sysmic camp in the Swan hills NE of Whitecourt...not mountains but still a bit of rough going. Pavement from Nisku to Whitecourt, high grade gravel out of "the court" for a bit then onto an oilfield lease road for an hour or so, still easy going...until we started down 40 miles of just dozer trail through the bush. These hills arn't high but can be very steep sided so on dozer trails it was customary for the lightest load to go first(in this case Billy S) and on steep downgrades the first truck went all the way to the bottom first & reported back on the CB what the heavier trucks could expect. So Billy S idles his way down this first 1/2 mile long decent to the bottom and discovers a small creek that the dozers had pushed a fill across for us to cross on. This crossing had a big culvert in it for the creek to run through but the beavers had dammed it up in the fall and some water washed some very big ruts into this crossing before freeze-up. It's now early winter so those ruts are very rough and very hard. Billy S radio's back up to us to "not hit the bottom hard" but that damn CB squelched out at the beginning and up on top all we got from him was "hit the bottom hard" so down the hill goes Billy R thinking he had to hit it hard to make the hill on the other side...If you've ever heard the C.W Mcall song, picture him going down Wolf Creek Pass thru downtown Pagosa Springs . Billy S had a front row seat watching this all transpire, he figured Billy R was doing close to 50 mph when he hit those frozen washouts. He claimed the 100,000 lb truck & load became airborn for 30 ft or so before bouncing to a pretty much uncontrolled stop and stalled out.
Billy R was in no condition to have anything to do with stopping that rig at the time, he was a bit of a mess. When he hit, the bottom of his belly and top of his thighs...and everything in between had ben jammed up against the steering wheel , peeling and stretching a lot of hide and bruising to the extent he could hardly walk for a while. He hit so hard that it broke the seat base loose from the floorboards of the truck (amazingly that was all the damage to the truck we could find)...he was hurt'n. That Nodwell that had been chained so nicely to the trailer...was still on the trailer but (and we don't know how) was now sitting crossways with one slack chain still holding it. Eventually we al got that Nodwell back where it was supposed to be and the seat somewhat chained and bungy corded back to where it was supposed to be and by now Billy is back to life enough to finish our load. He drove all the way into the Sysmic camp and back out to Nisku with his jeans around his knees because he couldn't stand anything touching his skin.
All the way back to Edmonton we tried to get him to stop at a hospital but no damn way was he going to let any nurse laugh at his bruised up "junk" as it is commonly referred to now . Back in Edmonton , Its time to eat so we stop at the Husky Truck stop on C & E Trail ( common gathering spot for oilfield trucker to congregate at the time). So were in there grabbing a bite and don't you know it...to add insult to injury...the waitress spins around with a full pot of coffee fresh from the burner, whacks a table corner and spills 2/3rd of that pot right on Billy R's lap...sh!t that must have hurt...but the good thing about it he has no choice in the matter, were taking him to the Grey Nuns Hospital.
He got patched up a bit (and we didn't see any nurses laughing) and the doc told him to come back in a couple days for another look and some more salve for his skin.... He told them that that wasn't going to happen as he could be 600 miles away in Rainbow Lake in 2 days...however there was a young nurse there that still lived with her folks on a farm east of Leduc and that she could meet him in Nisku to change the dressings if that suited him better...it must have...he married her 2 years later and they have 3 grown daughters now ...the forever consequences LOL.
One short trip that had lasting lifelong consequences.
Four of us left Nisku loaded with nice clean 4-chains apiece loads of Sysmic drill equipment one morning. I will use first names and last initials to keep the boys identifiable to you. Lance J had a Nodwell fuel service machine, Billy R and myself each carried a Nodwell with charge hole drill apparatus and Billy S carried an empty fuel tank on Nodwell tracks. These machines were going into a Sysmic camp in the Swan hills NE of Whitecourt...not mountains but still a bit of rough going. Pavement from Nisku to Whitecourt, high grade gravel out of "the court" for a bit then onto an oilfield lease road for an hour or so, still easy going...until we started down 40 miles of just dozer trail through the bush. These hills arn't high but can be very steep sided so on dozer trails it was customary for the lightest load to go first(in this case Billy S) and on steep downgrades the first truck went all the way to the bottom first & reported back on the CB what the heavier trucks could expect. So Billy S idles his way down this first 1/2 mile long decent to the bottom and discovers a small creek that the dozers had pushed a fill across for us to cross on. This crossing had a big culvert in it for the creek to run through but the beavers had dammed it up in the fall and some water washed some very big ruts into this crossing before freeze-up. It's now early winter so those ruts are very rough and very hard. Billy S radio's back up to us to "not hit the bottom hard" but that damn CB squelched out at the beginning and up on top all we got from him was "hit the bottom hard" so down the hill goes Billy R thinking he had to hit it hard to make the hill on the other side...If you've ever heard the C.W Mcall song, picture him going down Wolf Creek Pass thru downtown Pagosa Springs . Billy S had a front row seat watching this all transpire, he figured Billy R was doing close to 50 mph when he hit those frozen washouts. He claimed the 100,000 lb truck & load became airborn for 30 ft or so before bouncing to a pretty much uncontrolled stop and stalled out.
Billy R was in no condition to have anything to do with stopping that rig at the time, he was a bit of a mess. When he hit, the bottom of his belly and top of his thighs...and everything in between had ben jammed up against the steering wheel , peeling and stretching a lot of hide and bruising to the extent he could hardly walk for a while. He hit so hard that it broke the seat base loose from the floorboards of the truck (amazingly that was all the damage to the truck we could find)...he was hurt'n. That Nodwell that had been chained so nicely to the trailer...was still on the trailer but (and we don't know how) was now sitting crossways with one slack chain still holding it. Eventually we al got that Nodwell back where it was supposed to be and the seat somewhat chained and bungy corded back to where it was supposed to be and by now Billy is back to life enough to finish our load. He drove all the way into the Sysmic camp and back out to Nisku with his jeans around his knees because he couldn't stand anything touching his skin.
All the way back to Edmonton we tried to get him to stop at a hospital but no damn way was he going to let any nurse laugh at his bruised up "junk" as it is commonly referred to now . Back in Edmonton , Its time to eat so we stop at the Husky Truck stop on C & E Trail ( common gathering spot for oilfield trucker to congregate at the time). So were in there grabbing a bite and don't you know it...to add insult to injury...the waitress spins around with a full pot of coffee fresh from the burner, whacks a table corner and spills 2/3rd of that pot right on Billy R's lap...sh!t that must have hurt...but the good thing about it he has no choice in the matter, were taking him to the Grey Nuns Hospital.
He got patched up a bit (and we didn't see any nurses laughing) and the doc told him to come back in a couple days for another look and some more salve for his skin.... He told them that that wasn't going to happen as he could be 600 miles away in Rainbow Lake in 2 days...however there was a young nurse there that still lived with her folks on a farm east of Leduc and that she could meet him in Nisku to change the dressings if that suited him better...it must have...he married her 2 years later and they have 3 grown daughters now ...the forever consequences LOL.
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
I had a small taste of the freedoms you’re talking about, my first couple years driving was all paper logs. One trip I’ll never forget was right before Christmas. I had barely two months experience at the time, never driven a big truck in snow before. I was coming back from somewhere in the USA, and a scale put the trailer out of service. That’s fine, I dropped the trailer and carried on home, I was due to leave the next day for Labrador. Of course it snowed on the way back and I got on the CB to ask about winter driving. Went out the next day with a buddy of mine to play around in some hills and snow to practise a bit. That truck had a manual 10 speed tranny. I left later that day with the trailer, I’m pretty sure this was a Saturday and I think Christmas was a Wednesday.
So off we go trucking. Get up around Kingston, stopped in to see some family for the night. Get up Sunday morning and hit the road....and the truck breaks down. Get it off the road in Brockville and find out this isn’t an easy fix. So they decide to send me another truck. Great. Wait around all day, grab all my junk out of one truck and throw it in the next truck. First thing I notice is there’s no gear shifter, it’s an automatic. Great.
So now have I not only never driven a truck in the bush, or in snow, now I’m being given a truck I’ve never driven and it’s an auto.
So off we go trucking again, I think as far as Quebec City Sunday night. Up early the next day get up to Baie Comeau in the afternoon. Grabbed a shower and a meal, filled the tanks had a nap. I think about 7:00 that night I hit the road again, I’d drive 2-3 hours, nap, drive 2-3 hours then nap the whole way there. Got into Happy Valley Goose Bay about 6:00 pm Tuesday night. Delivered the next day, turned and burned back to Baie Comeau that night, then if I remember right got to Quebec City Christmas Eve, then I easily made it to Kingston for Christmas supper.
Holy moly is that a wicked goat trail out of Baie Comeau, a bunch of hills by hydro dams, twisty windy hilly the whole way. No FM radio, scattered AM radio, no cell reception, it hit -38 at one point, there had to have been 6-8” of snow the day before I got there, it is one wild drive in the winter
I don’t remember what I did to “fix” my log book but it more or less got thrown out the window.
So off we go trucking. Get up around Kingston, stopped in to see some family for the night. Get up Sunday morning and hit the road....and the truck breaks down. Get it off the road in Brockville and find out this isn’t an easy fix. So they decide to send me another truck. Great. Wait around all day, grab all my junk out of one truck and throw it in the next truck. First thing I notice is there’s no gear shifter, it’s an automatic. Great.
So now have I not only never driven a truck in the bush, or in snow, now I’m being given a truck I’ve never driven and it’s an auto.
So off we go trucking again, I think as far as Quebec City Sunday night. Up early the next day get up to Baie Comeau in the afternoon. Grabbed a shower and a meal, filled the tanks had a nap. I think about 7:00 that night I hit the road again, I’d drive 2-3 hours, nap, drive 2-3 hours then nap the whole way there. Got into Happy Valley Goose Bay about 6:00 pm Tuesday night. Delivered the next day, turned and burned back to Baie Comeau that night, then if I remember right got to Quebec City Christmas Eve, then I easily made it to Kingston for Christmas supper.
Holy moly is that a wicked goat trail out of Baie Comeau, a bunch of hills by hydro dams, twisty windy hilly the whole way. No FM radio, scattered AM radio, no cell reception, it hit -38 at one point, there had to have been 6-8” of snow the day before I got there, it is one wild drive in the winter
I don’t remember what I did to “fix” my log book but it more or less got thrown out the window.
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Nope!
Went to Superior WI to splash some hot water (shower), then went over to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis) and grabbed a load last night. Heading up to Manitoba with it now
Had to start a new map LOL.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dul...86a8aea420!2m2!1d-93.2009998!2d44.9374831!3e0
What's the load this time and where in Manitoba is it going?
Is this typical? Head out with one load and then get ping ponged all over trying to return?
Craig
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dul...86a8aea420!2m2!1d-93.2009998!2d44.9374831!3e0
What's the load this time and where in Manitoba is it going?
Is this typical? Head out with one load and then get ping ponged all over trying to return?
Craig
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Plate steel up around Winkler
It seems to be the norm for me on these trips LOL.
Last time I was out to Alberta I crossed at Sweet Grass, down to Shelby area like I mentioned, down to Missoula, up to Winnipeg, down to Fargo and back to Bolton ON I think
The ol’ atlas gets a work out that’s for sure
Dispatch yesterday said because of the holiday in Ontario not much was happening, so I said to look for anything to Winnipeg
You must be at Winkler or close by now?
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dul...bae94ab4f8!2m2!1d-97.9389474!2d49.1801103!3e0
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dul...bae94ab4f8!2m2!1d-97.9389474!2d49.1801103!3e0