Driver Dave Trucking in Canada: Another Truck

Well I managed to get into another truck on the 7th. It is such a pain ringing up several times a day checking to see if the truck im suppose to be going in is getting any closer to Woodstock. I was doing that from the following day on the 5th. They lined me up for 3 at first, then which ever got to Woodstock first I would take. Two got turned round before getting to Woodstock. The one im in now, did get to Woodstock the night before, but the driver needed to go to Moncton for some reason. So they gave him a load to take with him. So I got the truck the following day. This time till the 15th. So was not too bad waiting but the other bad side to slip seating, is I never get to plan things with the family, because I never know what days im having off. I could say im taking a couple of days off, but I have too many off as it is. Not by choice either. Just waiting for that next truck coming in. so they better give me a truck very soon. Five new trucks turned up the other day. I know only teams theses days get the new trucks, but hopefully I will get one of there older trucks. I wont hold my breath.

Anyway enough of the whinge bagging and lets tell you what I have been up to.

My first trip was to Ottawa, Capital of Canada. Not that you would expect it to be. You would expect Toronto to have that gig with it been the biggest most populated city in Canada. Well my delivery was more or less down town, and Ottawa is not designed for highway trucks with 53' trailers. I had fun.

What made it worst, was the snow banks on the sides of the roads making the streets even narrower, but nothing I could not handle.

Down Town Ottawa

Then my collection was from the Canada's finest. There base was the size of a small town. Again not built for big rigs and they are even worst at plowing there own base. I could not find the building I wanted. So I asked this dude in a sidewalk plow. He offered to lead the way in his little buggy. It was so funny, he just darted off going down this road and round this really tight bend, not thinking if I was able to go round them with my trailer.

So I sat waiting for him to finally look in his mirror and see I was not following him. When he did eventually come back and took me a different way. I still had to drag my trailer through big snow banks to get round the tiny corners. The building I wanted was on the base, but 6km away from where I was. Like I said, a very big base. Most of the way was on un-cleared dirt track. Ice road truckers, eat your heart out.

If it was not for the trees, i would not have known where the road was.

Well that load I just needed to take it back to Woodstock, after I got him to take half of the load back off and spread it out to the back of the trailer instead of putting the full 48000lb's just on the front half of the trailer, making me way to heavy on my drive wheels. Luckily I had a gauge in the truck telling me I was too heavy. Otherwise that would have been a very big fine for me when I crossed over the scales. When I got back it was straight down to York, Pennsylvania. I did half the journey on the Saturday, which only left me 368 miles on the Sunday to do ready for Monday morning delivery. Now my goal for daily driving is 575 miles a day, just so I get over 4000 miles a week. So when I was half way down I got the message that they would unload me as soon as I got there so I could get my reload that night, instead of waiting till the following day. I thought great, I could bet my miles in, Then Joe sent me the message I could not load till 10pm. What a bummer. On top of that, experience should have told me it was not going to happen at 10pm either, but I had hope. Yea right, 6am before I left there. That went back to Montreal and from there I picked a load going to Moncton New Brunswick, calling at Woodstock on the way past just so they could service the trailer. When I dropped that off they asked if I had any more hours left and because of the short day the other day, I could afford to max my daily hours and do the full 13hrs so off to Shippagan, NB I went. Shippagan is as far North East you can go in NB other than a couple of little islands pass there. Now this load was going to Arizona, which is next to California. 3120 miles away. I was gutted I could not take it as it would have taken 5.5 days just to get it there and the assigned driver wanted his truck back in 2 days, so I just had to meet up with a day cab in Cornwall, Ontario and do a switch. His trailer needed to go back to Woodstock and he took mine to Toronto, where a truck will pick it up and take it to Arizona. Anyway I got back on the 14th spending 8 days in that truck covering 4600 miles. Im due out again on the 16th for a week, so will update you again when I get back. Have a great day.

I need one of these so i can tow the kids behind