Canada
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I started to drive truck when I was 17. That would have been in the summer of 1969. Dad had hired a new man to replace my uncle who wanted to quit working and farm. Then my uncle changed his mind and said that if he got 2 half days off each week he would stay on. The thinking was that the boss’s son was the prime candidate to get moved all over the place filling in where someone was needed so I ended up driving. I don’t recall having much choice in the matter.
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The first truck I drove at this time was a 1967 GMC tandem with a 5x4 transmission and a v6 351 motor. It was a bit on the small side when making delivery’s into new building sites. Because of this we ended up replacing the clutch a bit often. We tended to rev the engine and then ride the clutch to make it in to where the carpenters wanted the gravel. |
By fall my uncle had quit completely and because now I was experienced the simplest path for all concerned was for me to keep on driving.
Later that fall at about freeze up and dad bought a new 1800 Loadstar international and so I ended up with a new truck. We moved the box off the old truck onto the new one and I got my first taste of working with automotive wiring. I did the wiring and had to learn that tail light bulbs had 2 elements and one that was brighter than the other. I remember that it took me a while to learn. It sure would have been nice to have known that kind of stuff before I started. It was a long evening but it was well learned. I still know it 37 years later.
That fall we hauled a lot of big rock and that was hard on the box and lights. We collected rock that farmers had collected on the fields and hauled them to water control structures to control the flow of water. The rocks were mostly from 10 inches and up to 20 inches or so. Every evening I spent at least a ½ hour fixing lights in the cold. The truck was usually wet with snow and sometimes there was also road salt stuck onto the truck. Then you could even feel the 12 volt current flow through your hands. Made it interesting.
In the beginning of 1970 Dad got a job with another contractor to clear bush on about 200 acres. It would have been a small job for the other contractor but it turned out that the D7 and the D8 was too big. They would clear for an hour and then spend hours getting it out of the mud. There was little or no frost. The area to be cleared was an area into which the tailing water from a mine was drained. They decided to try doing it with a TD 6 which is were we came in. We had one and then we rented a small John Deere crawler as well. I got to haul them to the job in Bruce Lake with the new truck. At 18 I felt great to be driving all by myself to bring the cats to the job. My first over the road experience.
On the first trip I had to go into Keewatin to a hardware store and buy plates so we could drive in Ontario.
Those 2 trips up to Bruce Lake and then hauling the cats out again when the job was done was a big highlight in my life. I loved the work I was doing. Little did I realize that I would be driving for another 20 some years and have almost 1.5 million miles. This might not sound like a lot but you have to remember that hauling gravel for a summer only got you about 40,000 miles. Most of the loads averaged 10 miles per round trip and on a good day you could make from 20 to 25 deliveries.
Those were the days. --------- Orlando Penner.
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