Big Al Barker is our February 2012 Rig of the Month driver. He is a long haul driver for All Weather Windows out of Edmonton Alberta. Al was chosen as the winner of the 365 Trophy at the Alberta Big Rig Weekend last summer and is featured in the 2012 Wowtrucks calendar with the 2007 Pete that he drove at that time.

The 365 Trophy winner is given to a driver who shows pride in his work and is a good ambassador for the industry 365 days of the year. Al now drives this beautiful 2012 International Lone Star with a 450ISX Cummns, 18 speed double overdrive tranny and Super 40 axles.

This is his story:

My Dad was ex-Special Forces in the British Military. Being English he was good with horses so when he came to Canada he drove a horse and wagon for Silverwood Dairies. He would haul milk out to acreages in the area with this team of big old Clydesdales. It was great at Christmas time because the people on the acreages were quite well to do and they all loved the horses. They would give dad gifts, which would usually include a shot of one thing or another and by four in the afternoon he was sometimes well on his way. The lead horse of the team was named King and when it was time to go home he would just say, “King, home.” And King would take him back to the dairy where, often as not, they would have to wake dad up. 

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid and I can still remember Dad bringing home this old broken bike that he had found. He took it to our neighbour, who was a welder, and asked him if he could put it back together. Back then life was much simpler, you did things for your neighbours and they did things for you in return. Our neighbour said sure and quickly welded it back together - that is how I got my first bike. 

I was born and raised in the Beverly area on the very east side of Edmonton, Alberta. I was one of the Beverly Boys. You really didn’t have much choice in the matter, you were either a proud Beverly Boy or you weren’t and if you weren’t you usually took your lumps along with other outsiders.

I have an older brother, Mike, who now works for the city of Edmonton and a younger sister, Tracy, who works for a Chart Company in Nisku making charts for the oilfield.

I met my wife Shirley when I was growing up in Beverly. She lived across the back alley from us but we had very little positive interaction back then. Being boys we always thought it was a good idea to throw dirt lumps at the girls mainly because they were just that - girls.

We moved from there to a different part of Edmonton and I never saw her for the longest time until a few years later when we met and I thought, “Wow! This can’t be the same girl that I last saw picking lumps of dirt out of her hair.” Long story short we are coming up on our 34^th anniversary this year.

My folks are English and they came from a place where very few people owned their own homes so when we were kids mom and dad always rented and Dad always tried to move close to work. This meant we moved around a lot.

My dad ran an egg farm for a couple years that had about 10,000 birds. Us kids would come home from school and go straight to work in the barn until suppertime.

One day we had a truck coming to pick up the eggs in the evening so mom sent us back to the barn after supper. Part of our chores was to collect the eggs and put them into big wire crates. My older brother used to terrorize me a bit and this particular night he was on me to hurry up. I went flying through the door to the barn and, slipping on the ice, my foot went through a whole big crate of eggs that Dad had already moved to just inside the door. I was covered in broken eggs and didn’t know whether to cry or run. My dad just shook his head in disgust – I got lucky that time – I thought I was in for a beating.

My love for the big rigs started when I was about seven years old. Back then the truck routes in the city were open from 9am to about 5pm so I would sit on the front steps at 9 o’clock to watch the line up of big rigs go by. This did not impress my dad as he wanted me to be a mechanic and I usually listened to him. (Did I mention that he is ex-Special Forces?) I guess he had his reasons; one of my uncles was a furniture hauler who was never home and two other brothers drove logging trucks around Vernon BC which was dangerous and their days were also long.

When I got out of school I went along with my Dad’s suggestion and got a job in a shop pulling wrenches. I did that for 2 or 3 years until we rebuilt the engine of an old 60’s era, gas pot tandem axle Ford, with twin sticks. When we were finished my boss asked me if I thought I could drive it. He said he just wanted me to test it and make sure it was running properly. I said I thought I could and I took it out for a spin. I was immediately hooked. I thought to myself, “Wow, this is fun and I’m not getting dirty!” I quickly decided that I would rather drive truck than pull wrenches all day.

Back then you had to apply to the government to get into the Alberta Motor Transport Association Truck Driving School and then they paid you $50 a week to take the course. I applied and was accepted but continued to work as a mechanic because, although I told my Mom, I did not want my Dad to know until I had my license in my pocket. This put my Mom in a very uncomfortable position, as she was a prim and proper British wife who now had to keep a secret from her husband.

I took the 6-week course and, because of my knowledge of mechanics from having worked on many trucks, I quickly pulled ahead of the rest of the class but this did not do me much good, as I still had to stay through the whole course.

I received my steering papers on January 19, 1975 and went to work for Jim’s Express hauling cardboard boxes around town to the meat packing plants, breweries, and packaging companies. While at Jim’s I drove everything from Chev body jobs, Ford single axles to a stub-nosed GMC with a screaming Jimmie.  We didn’t wear hearing protection back in those days and everything was done at full volume from our trucks to our music.

Next I went to work for Sorochen Transport hauling freight around Edmonton with a tractor-trailer. I really wanted to go on the road but at that time you had to be at least 25 years old with 5 years of experience to get those jobs. The problem was no one would take you on to give you the experience so you really had to know someone in order to get a highway job. I hauled around town during the day and once in a while they would let me haul a chicken load at night. That was how I got my highway experience.

Hauling chickens is not for anyone with a weak stomach. You had to wear a pair of coveralls when you walked around that load because they can get you from a long ways away. When you get home you don’t even think about going in the house until you strip them off.

I did this for quite a few years, all the time I kept telling my wife that I once I hit 25 I could go on the highway and make the big money. We still get a chuckle out of that. I’ll walk in the door with a week’s growth - all worn out looking for sympathy and she’ll say, “Twenty-five eh? Big money huh?”

I worked for Macosham’s cartage hauling CP rail trailers around town for 2 or 3 years until a big slowdown in the 70’s when we all got our pink slips. Things were really slow and the jobs you could get didn’t pay much.

My father-in-law took me aside and said 10% of nothing was still nothing. You can sit back and do nothing and get nothing or you can go to work for whatever you can get. There were a few tough years but his philosophy got us through.

One day my father-in-law called and asked me to meet him down at a yard where he showed me an old truck and asked me if I thought I could make a living with it. I knew I could get more work if I had a truck than I could as a company driver so I said yes. That was the start of my owner operator years. I drove that truck hauling everything that I could until it started costing us more that than it was worth so we bought a new one that we ran for 6 years hauling all over BC and Alberta.

I found I was spending every waking hour either driving the truck or working on it so I woke up one day and decided it was time to go back to being a company driver.

About that time my buddy, who owned a tire shop, said, “You know a lot of truckers and trucking companies – why not come to work for me selling commercial truck tires?”

I’ve always enjoyed talking to people and have for the most part got along good with everyone so I decided to give it a go and went to work servicing commercial accounts.

It worked out quite well for me but most of my customers who knew I was a truck driver would occasionally ask me to pick up their truck and take it back to the shop to put tires on. The problem was every time I got behind the wheel it would pull at my heartstrings. I’m a little different in that I’m not the type of driver who gets on the road and turns on the radio to listen to music. For the first couple hours the only music I want to hear is the tires on the road and the rhythm of the engine - I just like to listen to the truck. I found that every time I got in a truck it got harder and harder for me to get out again.

All through the years my Dad has been my rock. I’d often go over to him and we would sit down and just talk about stuff in general. One day I went over and I guess my mood was off because he asked me what was wrong. 

I said, “I don’t know…” and I really didn’t.

He said, “You want to go back driving don’t you?”

I realized at that moment that he knew me better than I knew myself and I said, “Yeah, I guess I do.” And after saying that out loud it seemed like a big weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Little did I know it but earlier that day he had said to my mom, “I’ve got a feeling that boy is going back driving truck.”

So there I was, stumbling around trying to think of a way to break the news to my wife when finally I just told her, “All I really want to do is drive”. We talked about it for a while and she let me off a lot easier than I thought she would so I went back driving.

My career so far has taken me from company driver to owner operator and back to company driver and my steer time has lead me to experience the far regions of the Yukon, the west coast Vancouver area, the vast prairie provinces as well as other areas of British Columbia. I have had the pleasure of hauling flat bed freight, dry vans, reefers and other specialty units.

I eased back into it gently by just running around Alberta for a while until I met Darwin from All Weather Windows. He was still driving himself at the time and we hit it off real well so I decided to see if I could get a job driving one of their trucks.

Darwin put in a good word for me and they called me up but I was told that I had to start at the bottom and be a yard dog first until a truck came available and then they would see what I could do. I really wanted that job so I said that’s fine. Now and then they would have an extra load to go to Calgary at night and I would jump at the chance.

After 3 or 4 months Rob came up to me one afternoon and said, “I have a truck for you – you’re on the Prince Rupert route.” That was it – end of conversation. That was over 7 years ago and I’ve loved every minute of it.

It is one thing to get up every day and know you have to go to work. It is another thing to get up in the morning and want to go to work and do it with a smile on your face. Not everyone has that opportunity in life and unfortunately some don’t recognize it when it does come along.

I now have two dedicated routes; northwest Saskatchewan and the Columbia valley in the Kootenays. I don’t have customers; I have friends who I happen to deliver windows to.

I’ve always found that if you stop and take the time to listen to those around you and try to understand them, and what they have been through, you treat them differently and they, in turn, treat you differently.

One time at Demit scale on the road north out of Grande Prairie I pulled up beside a guy who was just starting to pull the tarp back on his trailer. I asked him what he was doing and he said he had to move 40 or 50 bags of feed to even his load off. I’ve never been afraid of work, as a matter of fact when I was hauling batteries I would wear out a handcart at least once a year, so I pulled over and hopped up to help him. He looked at me real strange but before he could say anything I said, “It will go a lot faster with two people.” It is a bit of old school philosophy but who knows, he may just be the guy who pulls over to help me out some day. It all evens out in the end.

One thing you have to remember when hauling windows is that the people you are dropping them off for are usually putting the finishing touches on their house or building and your delivery is very important to them. Not that you shouldn’t be careful with everything you haul but this just seems a touch more important to me and I like to make sure that they arrive in one piece. With that in mind I was coming back to Cranbrook from a delivery in Fernie one night and it was really icy so I was taking it easy. I was doing about 90kmh when another trucker came right up on my butt. He got on the CB and loudly complained that I was going too slow and shouldn’t be on the road. I explained my philosophy to him in no uncertain terms and told him he was welcome to pass me at the next passing lane. When we came to the passing lane I saw, as he flew on by me, that it was just a young guy. When I got to Cranbrook there he was stopped at the husky having a coffee. I thought how stupid - risk my life and that of other people on the road just because, in your mind, you’re macho and in a hurry to go nowhere.

Being careful and caring about my load has given me 30 years accident free - no scratches, no dents, no dings. That being said, as the years go by, that record scares the heck out of me.

I still wave to the guys on the road and when they wave back I know how long they have been driving. One guy asked me why I wave and I said that I believe it shows the guys that you are a professional. That guy you wave to every trip may be the guy that pulls over when you need help one day. Old school still rules...

The Columbia Valley and number three highway can be exciting and, as any driver who has traveled that route knows, the Salmo-Creston Summit can be a challenge at times. I found this out very quickly three years ago in the middle of February. I had finished offloading at the Creston Home Hardware store when I called on the radio to see what was happening on the pass but didn’t get an answer so I headed up. I got past the chain up area and started up the hill givin’ her a little to keep my speed up. I made it around the first two corners when all of a sudden there were snowballs everywhere – and these were some big snowballs. I was skidding up hill trying to stop and by the time I came to rest there was deep snow both in front and back of me. All of a sudden the radio came alive and I heard, “All Weather truck you are trapped in the Kootenay Pass. You will take direction from me from now on.” I looked up and saw that the voice on the radio was coming from a helicopter above me. He said, “You have a little room behind you. I want you to back up so that you are directly below that cluster of trees so that if the second snow shelf goes it should miss you.” I backed up until I was even with this tree line and then he said, “We have a loader coming down from the top and he will dig you out.” 45 minutes later the loader had dug a small hole through the slide and he asked me if I could drive through it. I said, “Get out of my way and just watch me.”

It is an unearthly feeling to be on a slope like that where there is dead silence and nowhere to go. You just hope and pray that you are going to get out of it. Keeping a cool head kept me safe, however once I got past the slide I needed an extended bathroom break and one heck of a smoke.

Once the guys heard about my little episode on the pass I had job security like you wouldn’t believe, as nobody wanted my route after that. I have to chain up a lot but that is the nature of the beast. 

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to run all three provinces each week in addition to having a very understanding wife of thirty-two years. My wife and I have two great kids. A daughter who is a now a nurse (handy for a guy like me) and a son who is in the freight business. The trucking business has been a tough go but overall I would not change a thing. After all, “Happiness is a loaded trailer”.