Yellowknife ice trucking

Thanks for checking in! Glad that you managed to keep busy and I hope that everything goes smoothly for your trip north. I assume that the trailers you will hauling to YK will be full?

A friend in Yellowknife texted earlier this evening to say that it is currently -42c there - they may be lacking in snow but they sure have the temps to build a good road!

So then, what sort of truck are you driving, and what is your opinion of it? I thought you just hooked up to whatever trailer was ready to go at the loading area, and didn't use your own.

That's one difference between hauling fuel and freight. Fuel haulers will, as a rule, have the same set of trailers all season. Fill them up, take them to the mine and empty them. Drive empty back to the rack and to re-fill, then repeat...!

Ah, OK, I didn't realise he was doing tanker work.

...trying very hard to bite my tongue here.....

Anybody ever try to make a hollow plow blade that could have hot air blown through it to keep the steel from getting too cold? It'd need to be enough below freezing to not have snow and ice stick to it, but warm enough to not be brittle. Maybe -10C would work.

Please explain?......

Last week I had a run out of Alexandria, 3 hours east of me. 0600 Thursday tee time, finish Friday aft.

Forecast for Wed nite there was -50 windchill. Old Freight that was a spare truck, didn't run much.

Go up early Thurs like they wanted? Yeah, right. Done a lot of time in the Artic, so I went up after supper Wed eve.

Truck rolled over 4 times, click, click, click... call in a mobile, get it fired with some juice, lots of conditioner in the tanks. 3 hours to get it running, brakes unfroze, an hour to pound the ice off the fifth wheel and get it working, pinned, trailer unfroze...you know the drill. I was one cold puppy when I bunked up.

Go to leave 6 hours later, and it won't do over 50k. On a down hill. Lines still froze. Limp it 90 minutes to Cornwall (a 48 km run), and all the shops are booked, solid. "Maybe next week..." was heard a lot. Let the company push the buttons, they got it into a shop, lost 8 hours on the day. Things did not get much better from there.


I don't miss artic ops.

Not a bit.

Nothing about what you said, David - I originally wrote a comment on the old 'fuel haulers Vs freight haulers' thing but deleted it and wrote what you quoted instead

Bloody hell! Good on you for going in early, you got grief but a lot less grief than you would have had if you had turned up when they told you to. Did you have the opportunity to speak to your boss and say,"Wtf"?

Since I retired, I temp for an agency. So that means the old and busted trucks, the runs they can't get their own guys to do, or they're short.

Or in this case: All three.

My boss at the agency knows my background, didn't argue me going up early. The ops guy from CCS that was running things, was iffy on the idea. "Had my guys fuel it up two days ago, ran fine" kind of stuff.He didn't mention, or perhaps didn't know, that the truck had to be boosted in -10 temps.

So, things went as I pretty much expected. You've done time up north, under these circumstances, you know what's gonna happen.

During all this, both were in the loop. And when I pulled 12 deliveries and 1000 kms on the Friday, the ops guy knew I'd saved him a whole bunch of hassle with the customer.

I'm in the agency yesterday, and it's been a slow month. 2 shifts. Well, it doesn't rain when it can pour.

I'm booked the next two weeks to cover a broker. He's picky, and in the agency you have three classes of driver: new guys out of the school, bottom feeders that can't keep a job anywhere else, and oddballs, retirees mostly, like me. So there's a lot of thuds in the place.

CCS calls, wants me next week for a multi-day. Another customer calls an hour later, asks for me too.

Now let's be clear here: I am nobody's gift to this shit. Drive the truck, be nice to the customer, give them their shit, get a signature, repeat until truck empty, go back to the yard. This is pretty simple stuff. I deliver cardboard boxes. There's no one's life depending on this stuff. No stress.

I gotta wonder at who else they're sending out from the agency before or after me. They're making me look like a god. That's pretty scary.


So the agency is all set to send me off to CCS, but the broker booked me 3 months ago. He's a nice guy, okay truck, handle all the freight, but it's good exercise. So I caught wind of this, went in, told them no to CCS. They're... not used to hearing that. But they have no carrot and stick with me, I don't need the money to live, it's to pay for vacations. And they haven't exactly been busting their ass to keep me employed. So, no....

It's nice to be wanted, but be damned if I'm gonna put up with a lot of shit. Or see a guy get shafted because someone wants to kiss some corporate ass.



I don't have to.

I gotta admit, being able to do so feels pretty damn good.

Nice position to be in. My first truck driving job was agency work in England. It was a great way to get a wide variety of experience, every day was a different truck, different trailer, different product being delivered to different parts of the country. There was often no-one there to give advice or tell/show me what to do, and when I think back to some of the mistakes I made...:eek1

I got to drive some shiny new trucks and, as you mention, the ones that no-one else would touch, too. The bosses varied just about as much, also. I don't have time to type my favourite story right now...

I remember, though, that the common complaint from young kids like myself trying to get into the industry was (and probably still is) that everyone wanted experience before they hired you as a driver, yet if no-one would give you a job then how were you supposed to get the experience? Most agencies required a couple of years worth of experience before they'd sign you up but there was one in Worthing on the south coast that I heard about and they started giving me work. They were sheisters really, but on one job I met a great bloke who ran his own small agency and he signed me up, kept me busy pretty much full time as I remember, and paid me more too. Nick and I are still in touch today, he still runs the agency and once every five years or so when I'm over in the U.K. I'll ring him and we'll go for lunch.

Cheers.

If I needed the money, I could just take a real job, got enough offers from my old life. Amazes me at the kind of money they were offering just to start. To my way of thinking, obscene amounts of money. :eek1

Only problem is: They'd expect me to like...show up every day.

I took 18 weeks off last year, plus some other odd days. I get to watch my boy grow up. Go riding, visit friends. Do family stuff. Maybe I'll reach the point that I'll jump in for a couple of years, knock off the mortgage, and call it done. I dunno.

I call what I'm doing brain-dead-monkey work. As in: you could get a ... to do this. Zero job satisfaction. For most of my working life I had a job that made a difference, now... I deliver cardboard boxes. But that's the choice I made. And I don't regret the time the boy and I get to beat on each other. Or go riding together. Or the time with my wife. Spent a lot of time away before, nice to be able take care of her for a change.

It was nice to dredge up some hard earned skills last week, and put them to use.

Good on ya' Drif, I'm happy for you and the way it all worked out. If you ever get to this part of the country, let me know. I'd enjoy trading trucking and Ellesmere Island stories with you over a pint. Or a pint and a half....

Deal. Same if you make it east.

Ice road open yet Unique?

Yes it is we just rolled into town yesterday and oh we hear that the road is up to about 8090% capacity already I guess there's a lot of ice this year.
I'm hoping to get out on the ice this afternoon maybe around supper time Yellowknife time

Any pics you can sneak through will be appreciated.

Have a safe trip, Unique. We'll be looking for pics


Squonker thanks again for starting this thread, lo these years ago, it has been a lot of fun to watch.

Ya know, when I couldn't find the right truck for the right money and realized that I wasn't going to be able to drive for myself this season I was offered a few driving gigs up there for other people. I turned them down, but now regret that decision. I'm so jealous of you, Unique! Thanks for keeping the thread going in my absence - I like to think that next year I'll be back whether I'm in my own truck or not, but for now I'm living vicariously through you!