Right, its been quite a long while since I’ve written a diary, mainly because most of my work these days is boring Monday to Friday stuff that while it gets me home, which is the only reason I do it, isn’t the slightest bit interesting on the most part.
This diary will be an on going thing as the trip progresses. If I wait until the end the it’ll just be too much to do and I’ll get lazy and not bother, so I intend it to be in several parts of the trip takes shape, until I get back home, whenever that is.
The company I work for are basically a large greenhouse/nursery growing all sorts of plants and the 13 or 14 trucks we have are there primarily to shift our own product during the various plant seasons. This work is mostly high pressure multi-drop work down to New England with smaller amounts going further afield. Outside of the growing seasons we undertake general freight work and can pretty much please ourselves with what we do and how much we work. For Canada, especially this part of Canada (New Brunswick) its a very good job and doesn’t suffer from any of the back stabbing, lies and politics that most other transport firms participate in with their drivers.
So, after been absolutely flat out since new year delivering plants, often with 25+ drops per week to New England, a place that has traffic and congestion every bit as bad as the UK and also after having 3 weeks off recently due to the birth of our first child I returned to work to find the busy plant season at an end. My first week back consisted of a short haul trip down to Sharon, Massachusetts with a load of frozen crab, only an 8 hour drive, followed by a reload over near Albany, NY going back to New Brunswick. After that they had wanted me to prat about at a cold store spending hours getting loaded, only to be given over two days to go another 8 or 9 hours down the road to Connecticut. I politely declined their request as I go away to earn money, not sit around for free in cold stores earning sod all because we’re largely paid on mileage.
I told them if that’s all they’ve got doing Monday to Friday work, they’d better find me a long haul trip which I’d be happy to do, so long as I had a decent bit of time off afterwards etc.
It wasn’t long before they emailed me with a job. I have them well trained and most of my communication with the office from home is via email, this stems from our multi-drop plant work. I always get them to email me my schedule which has all the details of my runs and enables me to google earth and street view all of the garden centres and florists I’ll be going to. As most of you can appreciate, garden centres and especially florists can be in horrendous locations and knowing what you’re getting yourself in to before you arrive just makes life so much easier, especially in a truck the size of the ones here. Anyone who thinks we’ve all got tons of room in North America has obviously never driven down the eastern seaboard, let alone to the average garden centre in Massachusetts or Connecticut.
Anyway, the job in question would involve staying at home until Sunday afternoon, then head empty to Granby, Quebec just east of Montreal to load for two drops in Montana, almost 3000 miles away. Excellent I thought, that will do nicely.
Day 1. Sunday 19th July 2015. Woodstock, New Brusnwick to Granby, Quebec. 442 miles / 711km.
I didn’t have to do an awful lot today. I was due to load the next morning at 10am in Granby, QC but I intended to go straight to the place and get loaded as soon as they opened in the morning.
I left home at 3pm, bobtailed a short distance down the road to our local petrol station that has some truck parking round the back and hooked on to my trailer. The petrol station in question is on the junction with the main Trans Canada highway so I was soon west bound and heading towards Quebec.
Within a couple of hours I’d crossed in to Quebec where Highway 2 in New Brunswick becomes Autoroute 85, its all marked up as the Trans Canada highway however. This stretch of road in Quebec has undergone huge improvement work in recent years with the dualling of much of it. In a few more years the whole stretch from the New Brunswick border to Riviere du Loup where the 85 meets the 20 on the St Lawrence estuary will be a four lane highway.
After a continuous 7hrs and 15 minutes of driving (this is perfectly legal in Canada) I arrived in complete darkness at my loading point in Granby. I’d 5 P’d (Planning Prevents ■■■■ Poor Performance) it on google street view and found it was an open yard with no gate. I opened my doors and backed on to a free loading dock and went to bed.
Day 2. Monday 20th July 2015. Granby, Quebec to Cochrane, Ontario. 601 miles / 967km.
The sign on the shipping door said they start work at 8am so having woken up just after 7 I notice that the two dropped trailer either side of me were being worked on. I promptly got dressed and went inside to book in. I was greeted by a very friendly chap who spoke excellent English, which isn’t that common in many places outside of Montreal. He informed me that my load only had one drop now as they had enough to make a full load just going to there.
The load in question is a kind of wall insulation used in basements and as a result is very light, the whole load weighs little more than 3 tons and its loaded lose on the deck basically up to the roof and to a few inches from the back doors. The downside is that loading took 4 and a half hours, and I didn’t get out of there until 1pm. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid by getting there the night before in the hope of getting loaded quickly and on my way. In Canada you can drive 13 hours per day and with the distance I had to cover I need to make each day count. By leaving that late in the afternoon the trip started on the back foot and it was going to be a case of parking late and starting late for a while. Not something I particularly enjoy doing, especially when heading across Canada because once you start heading west through northern Ontario parking places become few and far between and as its not a route I’ve done more than a handful of times, trying to find somewhere in the dark is never clever. Especially if when one truckstop is full, the next one might be over 200km away.
I have a scanner in my truck so as soon as I had my paperwork I scanned it through to the office so they could sort out of customs clearance for the US border and I was on my way quick sharpish.
After a quick bolt around the new Montreal ring road I was headed west towards Ottawa, the capital of Canada.
Not far beyond Ottawa the 4 lane motorway that is the 417 turns in to the single track Highway 17. It remains single track with the exception of the very odd piece of dual carriage way for 1920km all the way to the Manitoba border. Apart from the odd village and town here and there, its largely wilderness. As with much of Canada, the road condition is terrible in places and there was much road work all the way across making for an even more tedious passage than is usually the case.
At North Bay you can either continue on Highway 17 to Sault Ste Marie and along the lakes to Nipigon or take the slightly shorter and flatter Highway 11 that arcs north and rejoins the 17 near Nipigon. I almost always take 11, mainly out of habit more than anything. In North Bay I stopped for a half an hour break in the Petropass truck stop and happen upon a fellow British driver who noticed my Union Jack flag as we both walked towards our respective trucks. Turns out he’s been here for about 10 years and is originally from Swindon. After a bit of a natter I head on. I was hoping to get as far as Kapuskasing but it would be well after 2am and I just didn’t want to risk not being able to get parked so I instead aimed for Cochrane. I pulled in to the truckstop in Cochrane at half past midnight and after a quick bite to eat called it a night.
Day 3. Tuesday 21st July 2015. Cochrane, Ontario to Dryden, Ontario. 682 miles / 1097km.
After just over 8 hours off I had to hit the road. I’d of liked longer in bed but that would have meant starting the day at 11am and in order to bring the trip back on track I needed to be starting earlier and parking earlier.
An hour and a half later I arrived in the Flying J in Kapuskasing for diesel and a shower. I immediately find that they’ve altered the flow of traffic now so that you have to enter the truckstop and drive through all the parking to access the fuel islands. I suppose they’ve done this as it sometimes happened that trucks queued out on to the road waiting for fuel pumps. This now means though that every single parking place in the truckstop is a blind side reverse and once you’ve filled up, you have to drive out on to the main road before re-entering the truckstop in order to park. It all seems very arse about breast. Inside I found the shower to be somewhat tatty and not to the usual Flying J standard. It had been 3 years since I was last across this way and things have certainly slipped in that time.
I didn’t stay in Kapuskasing a minute longer than necessary and soon hit the road again. I had a lot to do today and when its 1100km of single track road with endless amounts of slow vehicles to get by, its bloody knackering and I just wanted to get it over with and be parked up. When heading to western Canada, this part of the drive for me is always something to be endured. Some drivers love it, they chill out and bumble along at 90km, I’m too impatient for it and just want to get move on.
After a quick pit stop in the Husky Truckstop in Nipigon I pressed on to Thunder Bay near the head of Lake Superior, the most inland of the Great Lakes. From here you make a right turn and head north west towards Manitoba. The hours ticked by and by 12 hours driving I finally arrived in Dryden. There is a Husky truckstop here but I usually opt to park at the Walmart to collect any bits and pieces I need. They have some truck parking next door to the main car park so its a good a place as any to camp out for the night.
Day 4. Wednesday 22nd July 2015. Dryden, Ontario to Swift Current, Saskatchewan. 730 miles / 1174km.
By this point I’d managed to pull my parking up and starting times around sufficiently to ease off a little so I had a little longer in bed and I needed it. I pulled out on to the road at 9am and started the last few hours to the Manitoba border.
Almost as soon as you reach Manitoba the four lane dual carriage way starts again and the forest ends and gives way to the Canadian prairie.
From the border its only a short jaunt to Winnipeg and the ring road. As is the case in much of the prairies, main fast flowing dual carriage way is often interupted with traffic lights etc and I hit my fair share of red ones.
To be continued…
keep up the good work. Looking forward to the rest of your trip!
that beets runing 11 load to telford a week good stuff post some moor drive when you can