Home so soon

Home once again, but this time a little sooner than planned. At the beginning of October, Emma was told her Nan only had a couple of weeks to live, so I warned Ayr that I could have to go home at anytime at the last minute to look after the kids while Emma could go back for the funeral. So when I took Scott out again on the 12th, Ayr very kindly kept us local, well at the most thirteen hours away. We basically was the Woodstock to Toronto express, we would take trailers going west and drop them at our Toronto yard and switch for trailers going east and drop them at Woodstock. One thing, it was great miles, as we was running 24/7, except a few times, we would have a collection at 1am in Toronto and we would arrive a few hours too early, so that slowed us down a little. We still managed to average over one thousand miles a day though.

Emma’ s Nan lasted a little longer than expected, but Emma had to fly out early hours Friday morning, so we got back Wednesday afternoon, so I could become house husband till Emma got back. It was Nan’s funeral today. Rest in peace Nan, you will be missed.

Emma would always joke that I had the easy side to our relationship just driving a truck, while she took care of our three lovely kids. I would always say, I would do her a swap anytime, and now that im here looking after our lovely kids, I have told Emma when she gets back, Im staying at home and Emma is going to drive the truck You housewives have it easy Been ex military and having excellent organisation skills, makes looking after the kids as easy as a walk in the park  What make it better though is most of Emma’s friends have offered to cook meals for me. Even the ones I’ve not really met yet

With it been Halloween coming up. The kids helped me decorate the pumpkins.

Canadians and Americans really go to town at this time of year, so Emma has decorated the house to join in. We could not do it last year, as we moved into this house on Halloween night. Even the adults get dressed up for Halloween, having parties etc Emma and the kids will be going to one on Saturday. I’m back to doing some proper work again that day, so no fun for me

Parts of Canada have already had Snow. Last year been my first winter, I was looking forward to it, just to know what its like. This year..... please keep me down anywhere south of South Carolina, Texas etc where they don’t get snow I wish

Anyway its time for bed or my eldest will never make the school bus in the morning, but if I am late, I have everything already laid out for him. I don’t want to break Fridays record, waking up ten minutes before the bus arrived and still got him on it with time to spare, having had some breakfast too. Well I did only get back into bed an hour before, after taking Emma the two and half hour round trip to the airport. So I did have an excuse.

Not much colour left in the trees now at the bottom of the garden

 Still a little colour here before the snow hit it this week.

Training

Here I am Back again.
Well what a couple of long weeks I have just had. Remember I said in the last post, one of the new English dudes was been trained in my truck while I was off. Well they asked me once I got back in the truck if I would continue with his training. In the past when they have asked me to train people, I have reluctantly said yes but managed to get out of it. Im a non smoker, and most people smoke here so I never want to ever train a smoker. It would be a nightmare. I prefer to be on my own anyway, but this time I said yes as I had gotten to know the driver over the time he had been waiting to come over, which was a long time. Luckily Scott knew driving these trucks are nothing like what he was used to. It does not matter whether you have one year or thirty years experience of European driving, only a little of that is going to help you drive these American trucks. It is a total different style of driving. Personally I think the less experience you have the better, as there is nothing worse than trying to teach an old dog new tricks. It just does not wash with some people. Firstly the trucks are one and half times longer than a European truck. They have drum breaks so you have to use your gears more to slow you down, but the worst part is the gearbox is a crash box, so that makes things more difficult. You have to double clutch and time the speed of the truck to the right revs of the engine to time it just right to select each gear without grinding the gears. If you really miss time it, the gearbox will just not let you select that gear then the truck is not under control. Even North American truck drivers get it wrong sometimes. It really does take some doing to learn it. Another problem is we all have an autopilot, a bit like walking, we just do it automatic without thinking about it. Well most of us drive like that too. So sometimes if you are not fully concentrating on what you are doing, you drift back into that old autopilot and next thing you know, you have not turned wide enough to allow for the extra 25 feet of truck, and you are dragging your trailer up onto the curb and over someones toes. Remember when you was learning to drive for the first time? That was bad enough. Now add driving on the other side of the road, in another country in something bigger than you have ever driven before, with lack of road signs and technology that went out of fashion 40 years ago in Europe. It does not make it an easy task.

The worst part about been a trainer at first is the lack of sleep. Ayr don’t know the difference between training and teaming. Training you have to sit with the driver to teach them everything, but Ayr just see two names in the truck which means they give you loads that have to keep the truck running day and night to get them there on time. They are greedy like that, an opportunity to get a lot more loads done in half the time. The first week was the hardest. I would sit with him for as long as I was satisfied he would be ok for a couple of hours while I got some sleep, then I would take over to drive all night. I would do the night shift because he had enough to concentrate on as it was, never mind adding avoiding the wild life on the roads at night. We did great miles the first six days though. To say Scott was only learning, We did 6400 miles running across Canada. We ran from Woodstock as far as Calgary, Alberta, and back. Just to give you an idea of Ayr forgetting I am suppose to be training Scott. When we got to Winnipeg they gave us a reload to Nashville, Tennessee, now because Scott as not taken his driving test yet, he is not allowed to drive in the States, so I had to kindly remind dispatch that fact. The second week we went out as far as Edmonton, Alberta, but this time we was getting a lot of delays like 12 hours in the shop finally getting the truck totally back to A1 plus getting to places too early in the night before they opened in the morning. By the second week, Scott was not grinding the gears as much, but I think that was down to not having much teeth left to grind. All together over the 13 days we managed to do 12600 miles, which was not bad at all considering all the delays we had. We are off for three days now, then I have offered to take Scott with me again so he gets student, trainer continuation. I must be mad
anything to get him through his test fast so I can get rid of him

Remember me picking up a new English driver in Toronto in February? Well he has been teaming since he has been here with a few team mates in there assigned trucks. Then last week, he was given his own assigned truck, and made a full time trainer now, so he his really doing well also. I would not want his job when the snow comes

Anyway till next time, Have a nice day, im going to catch up on sleep now

North Battleford, Saskatchewan

A little tight in this yard

Welcome to the Prairies (Boringgggg)