California in Missouri.

3412 km in 4 days.

____Day 1: Peat moss is a poor man's load; the worst rate in the industry. A company only pulls a load of dirt in a van if they haven't got good customers. All the premier hauliers of Manitoba deny that they carry the stuff; yet when you go to load at a peat moss plant, they are all there. Bison lining-up to load alongside Flying Eagle, and Penner too. But if you have a loaded trailer waiting for collection in Missouri; then any load going south is better than sending an empty trailer. The line is long and the loading slow. At the end of a fourteen hour day; I have only reached Fargo in North Dakota.

____Day 2: Interstate 29, all the way to Kansas City. Final destination is California, not the West Coast state but the small town in the middle of Missouri; not the river but the state. I am always fascinated by how places get their names. Apparently unscrupulous guides who led the wagon trains across America set up a California in Missouri in order to hood-wink immigrant settlers. A few weeks travel from the East Coast and there was a big sign saying "Welcome to California." The happy wagoners paid-off their guides thinking they had reached the promised land: job done.

____Day 3: Just two hours of driving across Missouri before I reach the plant nursery and am quickly unloaded. Another couple of hours and I am swapping trailers in Lebanon, the town not the country, just alongside Interstate 44. But no interstate driving until I reach Des Moines, as I cut across the state highways, due north into Iowa. The full eleven hours of allowed driving gets me to the Flying'J at Williams, just close enough to strike-out for home in the morning.

____Day 4: Snow is in the forecast but I am around the Minneapolis ring-road and away north-west along the Interstate 94 before the storm blows. From there-on a strong wind, snow and blowing snow make driving difficult. Not everybody has revived their winter-driving skills. After dark the ditches of Manitoba are littered with headlights shining-out at various bizarre angles. Blowing snow is packed down hard by vehicle tyres giving a sheet of ice to drive on. I creep back into the yard and drop the trailer; somebody else can have the pleasure of taking it to Gimli in the morning.

Wind and snow can soon put a rig in the ditch.

Coquihalla Chains

5040 km - 6 days.

____ Day 1: Away from Steinbach bright and early on a Sunday morning; thankful that the roadwork season is winding down. Good progress with the light load and a near maximum driving-hours day as I reach Lloydminster and the Husky Truckstop.

All the harvest is now safely gathered.

____ Day 2: Just an eight hour break before pushing on to Edmonton and an 8 o'clock delivery appointment. Penners do have a depot in Edmonton but my instructions tell me to take the empty trailer to the Calgary yard. Waiting there is a loaded trailer for Surrey, British Columbia. All goes well until some roadworks in the mountains at Field; a long line of traffic in the dark as signs say the work is 24/7. To Golden for the night with the chance of a good nights rest as I take a 12 hour break to compensate for the previous short 8 hour rest.

The first snows of Winter at the Calgary Olympic Ski Jumps.

____ Day 3: The weather is mild and sunny as I tackle the Rocky Mountain section of the Trans-Canada Highway. Dry roads in day-light hours is the preferable way to cross any mountain range. It is just getting dark when I reach Surrey on the outskirts of Vancouver. The trailer goes Penner's Surrey yard and there should be another trailer, loaded and waiting to go to Regina. But it has not arrived and does not show-up until nine o'clock.

Trans Canada Highway through the Rocky Mountains.

____ Day 4: On holiday; in August, it was a bicycle chain when I came down the from Coquihalla Summit on my bike; following the Kettle Valley Rail Trail. Today it is snow chains. A storm has blown in from the northern Pacific Ocean, rain in the Fraser Valley means snow on the higher ground. Signs warn: "Heavy Snowfall - Trucks Chain-up." From Box Canyon, the snow is heavy. I chain-up in the dark and chomp-chomp-chomp to the summit. The snow doesn't ease-up for a couple of hours as I pray the chains are going to hold together; creeping along at 25 kilometres an hour. At Merritt, things get better and the chains go back in their tray between the chassis rails. By Kamloops the sun is out, causing a fine film of water to form on the hard-packed snow. Tricky driving conditions and the rear-end starts twitching. Revelstoke and the snow is back, big wet flakes, all the way to the summit of the Rogers Pass, where another set of 24/7 roadworks shut the highway for thirty minutes whilst they do some rock-blasting. Eventually I reach Golden and I am tempted to stop for the night. But with the first bare and dry road surface of the day; I push on for Calgary. For over an hour; nothing comes in the opposite direction; a sure sign of trouble ahead. An accident has closed the road and I am soon at the back of a long queue; crawling for mile after mile, back across the Continental Divide and into Alberta. The maximum-allowed 16 hour spread-over comes before I reach Calgary and I forced to spend a wind-battered night in a lay-by.

Coquihalla Pass Summit.

____ Day 5: Clear and bright; not a lot of driving compared to the previous day. Into the Calgary Flying'J for fuel, food and a shower; then Moose Jaw for the night, leaving an hour's drive to the customer in the morning.

Double-width snow-plough on the Coquihalla Pass.

____ Day 6: The stuff is unloaded quickly but for once the office doesn't have a reload. It is noon on Friday the Thirteenth before they give up looking and tell me to run back; empty to Steinbach. Six days on the road and 65 hours worked so a reset is needed before I go again.

Rusty and so was the driver who put them on.

New York-New York.

5410 km - 6 days.

____ Day 1: Back to New York state for the second time at Penner International. But not before a big mistake and my first for the new employer. Usually I fix my own faux pas or blame someone else but when I turned up at the wrong border crossing; it was all down to me. Two times it was written "Roseau" on my paperwork but I blindly went to "Pembina" as I always do. It took three hours for the customs broker to come home from church, eat his Sunday lunch and change the entry for my load of animal foodstuff. Luckily the US Customs were as surprised as I was about the load going through Roseau and didn't blame me; but everybody else did. There was still time to get down to Nelson's Petro at Clearwater; feeling deflated.

Cabover Pete on Manitoba plates.

____ Day 2: Penners' trucks have the EZ Pass tags for easy toll payments so cutting through Chicago is a lot easier. I choose Interstate 88 East and Interstate 355 South, just before rush-hour, pushing on to the rest-area at Rolling Prairie on the Indiana Toll Road.

Once seen never forgotten, custom hooded Kenworth.

____ Day 3: Flat toll-roads across Indiana and Ohio eat up the miles. A phone call to the customer and he wants the delivery at 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning. That's 4 o'clock Manitoba time but the man does say that I can park on the farm. The last part of the journey is across the Finger Lake area of New York; valleys with vineyards on the slopes. Narrow country lanes but the sat-nav leads me straight to the place. The owner appears, we open the trailer and I back-up to the unloading door.

Every van drivers worst nightmare. A folding trailer.

____ Day 4: The cab rocks as the fork-lift enters and exits the trailer, sixty-six times. I have to get-up. Luckily I have my reload information and I'm away from the village of Dundee by six. A trailer swap at the big RDC in Hazleton, Pennsylvania; 300 kilometres south. Switched in half-an-hour and en-route for the Penner yard in Mississauga. The trailer is loaded with four drops for superstores in the Toronto area; deliveries start at 1 o'clock in the morning. So it has to be there before the end of my shift. The early start on the farm is now a blessing. Customs at Fort Erie is a breeze which makes it a fruitful but long day.


____ Day 5: The job flow continues. A loaded trailer is ready to go to Edmonton, Alberta. So after battling through the busy GTA traffic; I get out into the countryside and make good time with a light load of only 7500 pounds. It's 22 degrees Centigrade at Sault Ste. Marie as the sun goes down on a very warm November afternoon. When I park at White River it is still a barmy 17 at 8 o'clock.

Marmon wrecker at Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

____ Day 6: Strong winds rocked the cab during the night; the jet-stream moving south across the Canadian Shield. Two degrees above freezing as I pull out at day-break; within five miles it is snowing. The weather stays the same all the way to Steinbach, 1000 kilometres away. The third day of  eleven hours at the wheel. A 36 hour re-set while the truck gets a service and attention to a coolant leak; then continue on to Edmonton.

Not Enough Hours In Oklahoma.

7504 kilometres - 10 days.

____ The trip didn't start well; a six hour wait to get loaded at Portage la Prairie. Five pallets of my load had gone missing and I sat on the loading bay while they bagged-up replacements. It was getting dark by the time I cleared customs and crossed the border. Fargo was as far as I would go on day one. Destination was Spencer, New York, but even with Tuesday's hiccup, Friday's 9 o'clock delivery was still possible. Wednesday night at Rochelle's Petro Truckstop and Thursday at the Seneca Casino at Salamanca, NY. Interstate 86, the Southern Tier Thruway across New York, doesn't have a lot of truckstops so a casino with a big patch of gravel is the best I can do.
____ Spencer is a very small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, surrounded by copper leaved woodland on a warm autumnal morning. Quickly unloaded and away, on twisting, undulating two-lane roads; across country to the Interstate 81, south into Pennsylvania and onto Hazleton. A trailer change in a chaotic RDC with trailers dropped everywhere. I surprise myself by getting in and out inside 30 minutes. The trailer is carrying two consignments of Christmas decorations for superstores in Ontario; my instructions tell me to take it to the Penner yard in Mississauga.
____ Mississauga on a Saturday morning and another trailer swap. This time  it is a load going to Oklahoma City, 1900 kilometres south-west. Going straight back into the US without having a log-book hours reset can make things tricky but I cannot refuse the load as I do have enough driving hours to legally make the delivery. Problems could come afterwards. But first the load has to have customs clearance. Twice faxing the paperwork for an extortionate cost of $64 and a five hour wait make for a miserable Saturday afternoon. The clock runs out on the driving time before I get the go-ahead.
____ An early start from London, Ontario, gets me to the normally very busy Ambassador Bridge before the Sunday rush. Windsor to Detroit with only 30 seconds at the customs booth must be a record but that was all after I hit a deer. An eight-point white-tail buck on Highway 401. It came out into the slow lane just after a bridge; I didn't get on the brake pedal before I hit it at 100 kph in cruise control. I swear that at the last second, it turned towards the truck and lowered it's head; as if engaging in deer to deer combat. That action probably saved the truck from a lot of damage; the moose bar took the full impact. Normally if a truck hits a big animal; it hits the legs and body comes over the bar and onto the hood. The only damage was a broken lens on a fog-light.

Hefty front-end protection by Herd.

____ The day finished on the outskirts of St. Louis, half-done. The load was due to be delivered on the Tuesday afternoon but I was in the Petro at Oklahoma City by 2 o'clock Monday and that was  after a leisurely look-round in the Petro at Joplin. The driving hours were now getting critical, just three hours for Tuesday; the delivery was done ok but getting to the reload was out of the question. The despatch office knew the situation and booked a late loading time for the next day in Kansas City.

1989 Mack Superliner

____ There is a ball game going on. Kansas City Royals are at home to the New York Mets in the second game of the World Series. The place is buzzing. Strange how I have just come down from Ontario; where the Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the semi-final. I still don't understand some of the finer points of the game but was disappointed that the Blue Jays didn't go all the way. There are three Canadian trucks on the bays waiting to be loaded. I am first away but with limited hours coming back to from the previous weeks driving; I am last one back to the yard. Noon on Friday before I get back to the workshop and tell the guys about the fog-light lens. We all agree that moose-bars are a good investment and that the "Herd" brand is probably the strongest. Shame about the deer but at least it was quick.

On sale in the Petro at Joplin, Missouri, The hard-hat cowboy hat.

Maps From The First Trips At Penner International.

Just an easy short trip to start with. Pre-loaded trailer from Winkler; down to Maple Grove for a Monday morning delivery. They had a load of empty crates to go back to Winkler; then run back to Steinbach.

Took an empty trailer to Dryden. Swapped that for a loaded one and delivered that to Jackson, Missouri. Then ran to Lebanon, Indiana, and changed trailers again. This time taking a load to Mississauga and dropping it in Penner's yard. Out of there; I took a pre-loaded trailer back to Winnipeg.

Empty trailer to Dryden again and then the same delivery down to Jackson. This time the reload was at Arcadia, Wisconsin; another swap with a pre-loaded trailer. I dropped that in Winnipeg and bob-tailed home.

For the third time; empty to Dryden and swap trailers for a load to Jackson, Missouri. Then down to Olive Branch, near Memphis, for a live-load [loaded same trailer]. That went back to the Penner yard in Winnipeg.

Something different. Take an empty trailer to load at Richer. Then down to Millstadt before popping across to Effingham to pick up a load for Winnipeg. 

____ So far, so good. Penners do seem to have plenty of work from a lot of regular clients. There are a lot of trailers dotted about at different customers, all over North America. Swapping trailers sure beats all the hassle of waiting to get loaded. Also they don't expect you to rush about and with trailer swaps; you don't need to.

Is There Anything Good About This Job?

____ I was born too late to be conscripted into the British Armed Forces; so never had to do "National Service." But after five days of orientation at Penner International, I now know what 6 weeks of basic training must have been like for those poor squaddies. Sergeant-Major Rick was in command of our subterranean boot camp and he certainly knew his stuff. You could not fault his facts and figures but he had the misfortune to present all his messages in the style of an old know-it-all trucker, holding court at the counter of a truckstop diner. I had been given the heads-up on his abrasive teaching methods; so pre-conditioned myself, for the week, by pretending to be conscientious Captain Cautious. If he said "Slow"; I said "Slower."

____ We were a quartet that quickly dwindled to a trio. But I'm pretty sure Rick would have emptied a complete classroom of driving-school rookies in less than two days. Any novice would have abandoned the transport industry and returned to a safe career of burger flipping after the brow-beatings received by Adolf, Bob and myself. Adolf from Kazakhstan seemed to take it all in his stride. Maybe it was similar to his Red Army training. He looked the sort of guy who could still knock-down and re-build an AK 47 in under a minute. He also showed a good command of the English language and passed every end-of-day written test. There was homework too!

____ Bob from Gimli had chosen truck-driving as a retirement job after twenty years of running his own metal fabrication company. He was looking forward to a life of relaxed driving; poodling around North America without the stress of finding work for 22 employees and the day-to-day running of a business. He had jumped in at the deep-end as an owner/operator by buying a six year-old Mack tractor-unit and putting it on with Penners. Orientation by Rick was a big wake-up call. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday he was exclaiming, "Is there anything good about this job?"

____ I told him that it was him and his truck against the rest of the World, same as it always was; same as it always would be. Rick pretty much agreed. Later, I tried to cheer-up Bob with stories of Winter week-ends in Florida and nights-out in Nashville but I could see he was being over-come by a great sense of foreboding. There was a relentless onslaught of lessons to be learned and how to do things the "Penner Way." Compliance to all regulations, all aspects of transport industry safety, hazardous goods, log-books, cross-border Customs procedures and advanced driving techniques: all new to Bob and real eye-openers.

____ I can't remember if I learned anything new but stuck it out for the whole five days. I found out later that a certain group of people were having bets as to when I would throw in the towel and walk out. There is a thin line between forcefully presenting your company's ideology and bullying in the workplace. Maybe Penners only want the type of driver that is willing to endure that method of orientation and it separates the wheat from the chaff. But I came home every evening feeling like a toddler who had been severely told-off for shitting in his first-ever pair of underpants; after forty carefree years of wearing nappies. 

This Eagle Has Landed.

____ News: I have left Flying Eagle and gone to work for a family trucking company that has some trucks pulling for Penner International of Steinbach. Just over half a million miles in four years and four months. I don't think I have ever worked for a company that has gone through so many directional changes in such a short time. Mid-summer 2011 and things were on the up with the arrival of five new Peterbilt 386 and five new Freightliner Coronados. Half the work-force were recent arrivals from Europe; German, Swedish, English and plenty of Welsh. By August 2015, I was the only one left.
____ There was a fleet of 40 company trucks with a dozen owner/operators; split into Flatdeck and Van Divisions. Good work direct from several sources; oatmeal to the Eastern Seaboard, truck parts to Georgia, windows to Florida, quilting to the Mexican border and plenty of peat-moss to Texas. The dirt didn't pay so well but gave the chance of some better paying loads back to Canada. The office staff were first class in keeping the trucks rolling and the workshop took good care of the servicing and repairs.
____ For two years; things were as good as it gets at a trucking company. But the next two years showed a slow decline due to a multitude of different factors. By the time I separated my shoulder in October 2014; the truck count was in single figures and all the work was through Payne Transportation. When the new owners took over; all the old loads had gone and they were left with just the peat-moss. The arrival of ten new trucks has built up the fleet but with very little work, there has been a lot of unpaid waiting. Time for a change.

Freightliner Cascadia; newest of the Flying Eagle fleet.

#557, when #26 was in the colours of Payne Transportation.

Flying Eagle #26, the most powerful truck I have ever driven.

On the road with Flying Eagle Heavy Haul Division.

Pictures from the Kettle Valley Rail Trail 2015.

Brookmere Water Tour on The Kettle Valley Rail Trail

This is the whole of the Rail Trail but due to wild fires at Rock Creek we had to start at Beaverdell. 

Zack's at Beaverdell; tenting or rooms, hot showers. C-store in town along with pizza/ ice cream place. 

The trail runs for a lot of time through pine forests which provide welcome shade.

Cattle roam free on a lot of the trail.

Gazebos are few and far between but very welcome rest stops.

The trail is part of the Trans Canada Trail which one day will cross the whole country.

Bridges are optional.

Sunset at Hydraulic Lake campsite by the lake. Very basic camping with no tap water, washing in the lake and pit toilets.

Trestle bridge at Myra Canyon, one of the most popular parts of the trail with bike rental available for the casual visitor.

Tunnels and trestles for about 13 kilometres at Myra Canyon.

The trail dates from 1915 and is an engineering marvel.

All the bridges at Myra Canyon burned in a 2003 wildfire and were rebuilt to original plans by 2008.

Drinking water was a problem with not many refill places. I carried 4 bottles on the bike and two in the panniers.

The trail runs high above Kelowna and Lake Okanagan. Going down to Kelowna for supplies is a full days hard work.

Chute Lake is at the highest point of the route and has a camping resort. Gradient on the trail is a maximum of 2.5%; so not too difficult for trains or bicycles.

Rattlesnakes sometimes sit on the trail and nearly get run over.

Adra Spiral Tunnel, above Naramata, is where the track did an underground U-turn.

The trail gradually descends to the level of Lake Okanagan. 

From the Little Tunnel down to Penticton the trail is well surfaced with many more cyclists and walkers.

Grape growing and wine-making are major occupations on the hillsides in the Okanagan Valley.

Summerland is the only place left where the rails are still in place. There is a short section of track for a heritage rail society to play trains.

Just the one flat tyre during the trip and that was because I over inflated the rear tyre in an effort to reduce rolling resistance. The tyre popped off the rim and the tube split with a mighty bang.

Although the big tyres did need more effort from me; they made it an easier ride over the rough sections of the trail.

The last section of the run down to Princeton was over wide-open grassland.

Princeton to Tulameen was in a rocky gorge and the track was a much better option than the highway.

These guys were just four of a dozen that I met that were doing the whole trail as a self-supported tour. All were on mountain bikes.

Rockslide near Collins Gulch. One of three times where I had to unpack the bike and carry my stuff across.

Around Tulameen, the track was rough. Mainly due to quad-bike/ATV activity. Loose rocks and stones where the dust had been blown away by fast moving wide tyres.

Loose stones on the trail leading to Otter Lake.



 

The trail joins the Coquihalla Highway and takes the same route at times on the descent to Hope.

Massive landslides in 1949 at the Coquihalla Canyon are the main reason that the KVR closed; although it continued in limited use until 1961. 

Most of the landslide area can be by-passed by using the service road of a gas pipeline for 22 kilometres. It is gated but part of the Trans Canada Trail and available to hikers, bikers and horses.

The Othello Tunnels are the last section of the trail before Hope. Another engineering marvel where the railroad went from tunnel to bridge to tunnel to bridge in the Coquihalla River Gorge.   

One hundred year hand carved tunnels.