SNOW SHED
JUST SOUTH OF THE SUMMIT ON THE COQUIHALLA.
SNOW SHED
JUST SOUTH OF THE SUMMIT ON THE COQUIHALLA.
NOTE: This story is full of pictures, just click on the highlighted words.
LEE A. WOOD
Things being slow in the film industry during `02, I picked up some work driving city tractor.
For the last two weeks of September `02 I shuttled trailers around the Vancouver area for Van Kam Freightways.
When I called Van Kam during the first week of October they said all there senior drivers had returned from holidays and there was no work for me in town, so I asked about out-of-town work. The line dispatcher said he could use me for the first weekend in Oct. to do a trailer switch in Castlegar.
As per usual, for me, things went smoothly. When I arrived in the southern part of the Vancouver area to pick up my trailer, they hadn’t even started loading it. When my load was finally in the trailer, it was not my trailer. They had loaded the trailer that was supposed to go out before me.
Premonition, maybe, I had not backed under my trailer.
The other driver unhooked from his trailer and I backed under it. With a couple of phone calls to change the trailer numbers on our paper work I was on my way, five hours late.
The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful except that I came home during daylight instead of in the dark, as I thought I would, so I hadn’t taken my camera. I missed some spectacular shots of trees in their fall colours as the sun was bright all day.
I was supposed to take the ex out for supper at a nice Chinese steak house in Richmond, that night ,but by the time I got home she was worn out from shopping and we just had a quick meal in a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver.
Monday I was too tired to work so I turned down a chance to do a Kamloops switch but I agreed to do them for the rest of the week as the regular driver was taking an unexpected week off.
Tuesday night, as per instructions, I showed up for work at 8 PM. A quick pre-trip of my tractor, in the dark, somewhere I had lost another flashlight, back under the wagon (trailer), a quick inspection of it, pull it out, seal the doors, and I was away.
The skies were clear and I had a pleasant ride in the old Peterbilt. (Said facitiously) Why anyone would buy one of those $%#@#$ bone rattlers, I’ll never know. Its one saving grace was the 500 Hp Cummins. The light load sailed up the steep grades of the Co Co whatsit, [(Coquihalla Hwy.) ( A road that should never have been built.)]
In Kamloops I had trouble getting fuel as no one had told me where to find the PIN for the fuel card. At least I had a fuel card. When I went to Castlegar they never gave me a card, nor told me that I was supposed to fuel the tractor for the next driver.
Confident that I had enough fuel, I waited for the rig to arrive from Edmonton, switched trailers with him and headed for The Beach. (The West Coast or Vancouver & area).
As I didn’t get my switch wagon until 3 AM it was 7:30, deep in the heart of rush hour, by the time I reached the heart of the Lower Mainland. (Vancouver is situated at the mouth of the Fraser River and the flood plains south of the mountains, for about 100 miles East of the salt water, are know as the Lower Mainland.)
And any of you who know me know how much I love rush hour. I have quit more than one company because I have spent hours locked in traffic when I should have been somewhere else, anywhere else.
o Tuesday night wasn’t so bad. Beginners luck? Wed. night would be better.
I now knew where the PIN was and I could spend 3 hours sleeping while I waited for my wagon in Kamloops. Then I could hit rush hour on Thur. Morning, wide awake.
By now you know my life better than that.
When I arrived for work my trailer was connected and pre weighed. Paper work was ready, doors were sealed, I was good for go.
And go I did. I had a smooth sail, pleasant banter with the lady at the toll booth, and zoom, down the other side, drop my trailer, fuel up, go to sleep.
Then the fun began.
Have you ever tried to sleep in a Pete that doesn’t have a sleeper.
The guy that designs those things should be forced to live in one for the rest of his life.
Finally my switch arrived and I headed back, into the hills.
When I had come over the pass the temperature had been warmer than the night before and while I was fuelling in Kamloops the temps were below the previous evening. That should have been a warning to me.
Heading out of the Thompson Valley, it is all up hill for several miles.
The skies were clear.
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After I dropped over the mountain and started up the next long hill I hit the first snow. It was coming down in big flakes and cutting the visibility. However once I was over the hills and coming down into the Chilcotin Valley I was out of the snow, the road was bare.
This lasted all of twenty minutes, until I got past the town of Merritt and started up the next hill. Barely to the top, I was back into snow.
I wasn’t worried about traction as I had really good `V’ grip tires on the back axel and some fairly good-style tread on the front drivers. While stopped at the break check above Merritt I had taken the time to find my flashlight and located the switch that interlocked my two differentials.
I had been worried about spinning coming through the first bout of snow but I wasn’t about to pull over and I wasn’t going to start flipping switches in the dark in case I released my fifth wheel lock.
Now there would be an interesting experience. NOT.
It snowed big heavy flakes for forty of the fifty miles from Merritt to the toll booths at the top of the Coq.
For a long time I followed the tracks of a Quick-X rig and eventually caught up to him.
After following him awhile I thought it was my turn to break trail. When I encountered a slight let up in the snowfall, enough that I could make out which lanes we were in, I passed him. Then I went blind.
Without the headlights of his tractor, and his tracks in the snow, there was no way to tell where I was.
The odd time, I could I could see a white line through the snow on the road. Sometimes, I could see a sign to one side or headlights coming the other way. Most of the time, I was flying blind, barely able to see the hood ornament on the conventional.
For awhile I was following the curve of the concrete guard rail when suddenly I saw a divider sign in front of me. Just barely able to swing it back on the freeway I realized the guard rail had become the side of an off ramp.
Eventually I reached the cloverleaf for the Coquihalla Lakes and found bare road.
The snow let up and I had bare but wet pavement the rest of the way home.
Needless to say I was pretty leery about going out Thursday night but the skies were clear and the road was dry. There was some snow lying along the sides of the road South of the toll booth which showed the snow fall had followed me, for a ways, the previous night.
Going down the hill, North of Merritt, I hit it again. The snow was falling thick and fast and visibility was down to ten feet for about ten miles.
After making my switch, I climbed the hill out of the city and stopped at the weigh scales. I could see that the brake check on the other side of the freeway was virtually empty so I went into the scale shack and asked the operator if she had a weather report for the Coq.
Better than that, she had a TV.
The camera is mounted at the brake check on the South side of the toll booth on top of the Coq.
The television showed us snow, falling so thick you couldn’t see the street light poles, only a glow from their lights, around the brake check area.
Needless to say I came home via the Fraser Canyon. Bare and dry all the way.
VAN KAM 2722 Despite the fact that my switch had shown up an hour late I was only an hour late getting in. By the time I had gotten to the beach the worst of rush hour was over.
Except that is for traffic heading West out of Vancouver. A little pickup had tried to do a somersault near the weigh scales. Emergency vehicles had the freeway blocked. Traffic was backed up across the Port Mann Bridge.
Friday was my last night filling in on this run. The skies were clear and the road was bare. My trailer was already waiting for me when I got to Kamloops.
No, it wasn’t that easy. Two of us do that switch every night. The other driver leaves before me.
Friday he was impatient to get away and instead of waiting for the day shift to finish with his tractor, he takes mine.
Shortly after, his tractor arrived and I make arrangements to use it.
Shortly after that I got a call from the driver on my tractor, he wanted to know if I had broken the stick shift.
How the hell can you break a stick shift? The rod is solid steel and the joint is a machine weld from the factor.
Never the less he brought it back with a broken stick and wanted his usual tractor. So I had to go to the other yard, on the other side of the city, and get a different tractor.
Same model as the one I had been using but even rougher riding.
Then, of course, when I was fuelling up in Kamloops, the PIN didn’t work and after three tries the machine wouldn’t give me the fuel card back.
Of course there was no answer on the all night number that goes with the card but luckily I had enough fuel to get home.
PS.
Two of my pet peeves.
1. At one time there was a great truck company in B. C. that made just the best trucks in the world.
The government official that allowed Peterbilt to buy out Hayes so they could inundate the Canadian trucking market with their plastic and chrome, US freeway, haulers, should have been shot.
2. At one time there was a very good government in B. C. that really knew how to build highways. The Premier of that gov’t was WAC Bennett. Later his son , Bill, became Premier
When Bill was premier he was afraid to drive the Fraser Canyon or the Hope-Princeton, from his home in Kelowna, to his office in Victoria, so he designed the Coquihalla Highway. Long after he had been ousted from power the highway was completed and the Okangan Connector was built, connecting the Coquihalla Highway to the Okanagan Valley.
The plans for the Coq,. never included a budget for maintenance.
The Coq. should never have been built. It is an over-priced abomination that is poorly maintained and has done nothing but divert traffic from the Fraser Canyon causing many business along that route to go broke.
PS II. In retrospect I owe Chevron an apology. Not that I mentioned their name earlier but, their machine didn’t eat my fuel card. I found it in my jacket pocket the following week. Therefore I must retract all the foul language and rude comments I left on their voice mail. The PIN I had been given , by a fellow driver, was the wrong one. Chevron was not at fault in any way.
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