The tougher side of North American Truck Driving.

I called the office on Wednesday 16th December to find out if I was being dispatched that day, I was asked if I could rescue a driver in Maine and take him and his truck through to its delivery point in Virginia, I agreed, but was not happy that I would not be in my truck as now all my kit was in it and i would have to live out of a bag for a week. Anyway I'm a flexible fella and agreed to meet up with my ride to Maine in the yard at 8.30 that evening.

Steve the other driver arrived and after stowing my gear in his truck we set off for Woodstock where we would spend the night, we left in quite bad weather with high winds snow flurries and -9 temperatures. The Confederation bridge that links PEI to mainland Canada was closed due to the high winds and after having our paperwork stamped at the potatoe inspection station at Bordon, we joined the ever growing que of trucks waiting to cross the bridge. After half an hour the shout came over the CB that the bridge was open and all hell broke loose with trucks wanting to get over the bridge before they closed it again, the scales were sending people around unless they had to get their papers stamped, so after getting ours stamped off we went. Now we were fully loaded crossing the bridge but the wind just shook us about like we were empty. We stopped at Sailsbury to fill up and by now the temperature had dropped to -20 and the wind chill made it feel like -30, I had never experienced temperatures like this before and my t-shirt and fleece did little to offer any resistence to the knife like winds, lesson # 1, get a winter coat!

So off we go to Woodstock a couple of hours up the road and parked up for the night last look at the temperature gague -21.

The following morning in near arctic conditions I grabbed a XL timmys and we headed for the border at Houlton, Maine.

We meet up with the other driver and after transfering my gear into Ben's truck and after a very large breakfast, with pancakes, we set off for Virginia, below is the route of our journey





I drove down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington DC, and finally into Virginia.
I got to realise a long time ambition of mine to see New York city, and this we did whilst crossing the George Washington Bridge, it was night time when we got there and NYC was all lit up, next time I go there it will be with Maxine & Elliott for a bit of sightseeing.
After tipping our load of Mussells we were told to load clementines out of Wilmington, Delaware for Cambridge Ontario. Then ran into the worst snow storm the Eastern Seaboard had seen for almost 80 years, it took me 7 hours to cover 276km thats an average speed of almost 40kmh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And below is part of the reason.

They are not used to this much snow in Virginia!!!!

Two trucks stuck on a slight hill, this was funny, they have no clue what to do in theses conditions.

We were empty but I showed them how to get going.

We eventually parked up about 50km from Wilmington and woke to find 2 feet of snow so I asked the nice man with the plough to cut me a path out.

What a nice man.

We collected our clementines eventually from the port in Wilmington after several hours delay then I headed for the border at Niagra running through the night, we were running with an Owner driver, Jason from New Brunswick who was heading for Toronto and chatting to him madethe time fly by, we arrived in Cambridge at 6am the following morning and were asked could we team run the load for Moncton back as they needed it ASAP although we had a booking time of 11am the following day. so ben jumped in the drivers seat as he could now drive again and at 10.30 am we set out for Moncton which is an 18 hour drive. I hit the bunk for some well deserved sleep.  After loads of coffee and a few McDonalds BLT bagels and long stints of team driving we got to Moncton at 6.30 the following morning, we were empty and after getting the trailer dissinfected at the potatoe inspection station  got back to the yard parked it up and headed home for a well deserved break and loads of sleep.

Christmas

I am heading out again Christmas Eve for New York as I have a delivery Boxing Morning, So I would like to wish all who are following this blog and your families the happiest of holidays, and please where ever you are and with whoever your with, stop, and spare a thought for all us who can not be with our loved ones this Christmas.

Please stay safe over the festive period and I look forward to bringing you my report from christmas on the road.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Steve.

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