Our February 2009 Rig of the Month driver is Ed Lande from Surrey BC. This is his story… I was born in New Westminster, BC where we lived until I was four years old. That’s when we moved into a house my Dad had built in Surrey. One of my Grandmothers lived on River Road in Surrey and my friends and I would often go out on her front lawn and wave at the trucks and they would blow their air horns for us. There were a lot of drivers who traveled that road day after day and it got so they would automatically look for us.
My Dad was a second generation fisherman so I grew up around boats and I’ve spent a lot of time on the water. My Grandfather owned his own fishing boat and after he died my Grandma kept it working for awhile but she eventually sold it.
My Dad was an engineer on the boats. It was his job to keep them running. He is amazing when it comes to anything mechanical and that’s why he was always in demand with the high end boats. He can fix anything, which has helped me out enormously with my trucks. Many times I’ve pulled into his shop late in the evening with some major problem and even if he didn’t have the right parts often he has managed to keep me going until we could get them.
I started commercial fishing during school holidays when I was twelve years old and fished all through my teenage years. I loved the water and fished all up and down the coast but there was one trip that Mom wouldn’t let me go on and that was when Dad went to the Bering Sea each year to fish Halibut. One of Dad’s favourite television shows today is, “The Deadliest Catch,” because it is filmed in the Bering Sea. He says that fishing for halibut back then was even more dangerous than what you see the crab fishermen doing today. After watching that show I can see why my Mom didn’t want me to go.
Back then there was still an incredible amount of money to be made fishing. By the time I was fifteen I was earning a full crew share the same as my dad. We worked extremely hard in all types of weather but even so the money was over the top. My mom kept telling me I should be buying houses and saving my money but I was having way too much fun to think about the future. Cars and girls were more important to me at that time. Besides more money was only another trip away…
Fishing was seasonal so I had lots of time the rest of the year. When I was sixteen I’d walk down to the Fraser Surrey Docks to look at the boats and watch the trucks loading freight. This is where I met Dennis who worked for Johnston Terminals. He would pick up at the Fraser Surrey Docks and drop in Seattle and we would talk about trucks and driving. One day he asked if I wanted to go on a run to Seattle and I jumped at the chance. Next night he picked me up and when I think back it was a pretty shaky ride in that old cracker box Ford cab-over but I didn’t know any better at the time so I really enjoyed it.
By the time I reached the end of my teens I had had enough of fishing and since I’d always wanted to drive truck I went and got my class one. For the next two years I ended up working at a sheet metal shop running break presses, shears and other machines.
One day the shop bought two new Ford Louisville tandems. They had one driver so I asked if I could drive the other truck but they had already hired someone. When the new driver showed up it turned out to be a good friend of mine, Cal Heinrichs. I finally did get to drive a bit for the shop but not enough for me.
When Cal moved on he bought a new Peterbilt and I made a few trips with him, both south to California and over to Edmonton.
I got married in 1980 to Michelle and we have two children, Nicole who was born in 1982 and James was born in 1984. Shortly after I got married I left the sheet metal shop and bought my first truck. It was a 1977 Western Star that I put on with Triangle Transportation just as they were starting a U.S. division. Cal was working for them at the time and he was doing quite well.
Michelle wasn’t happy about me buying the truck and I guess she was right because my first shot at being an owner operator didn’t last too long. I gave it a good try but with fuel, insurance and payments, there were more bills coming in than money so eight months later I sold the truck and got out just before loosing my shirt.
I took a job working in the power house at Namu, B.C. Namu is a fish camp that is three hundred and fifty miles up the coast between Vancouver and Prince Rupert. They processed fish by cleaning and freezing them and then they shipped them out on big packer ships. They also supplied ice to the fishing boats that would stop there before going out. The power house comprised of six V-12 Jimmie engines that ran EM Generators which were the only power source for the town. This meant that there had to be a man there twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. It was our job to keep the engines going. I was on steady night shift and we normally ran up to four engines depending on the amount of power needed.
It was seasonal work but I worked seven days a week from early spring to late fall. Michelle would fly in and stay for a while and then go back to the coast. If the company plane was coming up and there was room we would sneak someone on the flight which saved a lot of money.
After two years in Namu I decided I had learned enough the first time around to give trucking another try. My second truck was 76 International cab-over with a 400 Cummins. I went back to Triangle but this time it was to do town work which worked out better for me. They got a new contract and I started hauling bags of powdered shot crete to Westmin Mine outside of Campbell River. We would drop at the mine and then run over to Port Alberni for a back haul of lumber or plywood. It was while doing the Island run that I met Gerry Hoogendorn. He was fun to run with. He was always joking with people and we had lots of laughs.
One day the guy that I bought the International from said a friend of his wanted to buy my truck. It was really looking good as I had done a lot of work to it and apparently this young guy had fallen in love with it. He gave me a real good offer right at the time that an opportunity to go dispatching for Triangle came up, so I sold it to him.
Big Mistake! What a job. I like my freedom and sitting behind a desk for 12 hours a day while both drivers and customers were always on you was not for me. I left that job on good terms but with a whole new respect for dispatchers.
I bought my third truck, a 1980 Pete cab-over and once again I found myself back at Triangle working out of the rail yard hauling steel and coils. A short time later they started doing steering dolly work and that was a lot of fun. We hauled bridge beams for sky train and steel beams for forestry roads and the Coquihalla Highway. One trip we made was to Mackenzie, BC, with a 95 foot beam for a new crossing. It was only supposed to be two hours of off highway travel but that soon turned into six hours. It started with us having to be pulled through the mud and then it turned into a dust bowl where I couldn’t even see Glen in the steering dolly behind me. It was a long trip but we made it.
I got to drive the dolly a couple times myself and that was a real eye opener. It rattles you at first being back there and that close to the ground but after a while you settle down and relax. It was a laugh to watch people driving by looking down at you and then doing a double take when they realized that there was someone back there steering. Just smile and wave back… I loved that job, if there was work everyday I’d do it in an instant.
The first time I drove in snow was on a trip to Kelowna. The weather was good on the way up but on the way back I stopped to visit a friend in Princeton. We ended up having supper and I stayed quite late. When I left there were huge snow flakes coming down and they just kept coming and coming. I didn’t have chains with me and by the time I was up to Sunday Summit I was a wreck but I kept on going. I was never happier to come down the hill into Hope and see rain than I was that night.
One morning I got a dispatch to get a chassis and go over to Acorn Forest Products, a lumber mill in Delta. At that time it was cheaper for them to load the lumber into containers at the mill and haul them to the docks for shipping. Albert Niebour had the contract to haul for them and I worked there on and off throughout that summer. In the fall he asked me if I wanted to work for him full time so I started there in early 1987.
In 1989 there was a fire at the mill and that put us out of work for awhile so I went back to Triangle until it was rebuilt. When we went back they decided that it was now cheaper and faster to haul the wood on flat decks so we all bought B-trains. Instead of loading it into containers first they were now dropping lifts straight into the hold or setting them right on the deck of the ship.
Around then my old cab-over was starting to wear out so I began looking for a new truck. I ended up ordering a new 1990 Pete, 379 Long Nose. It is the truck I still have. It still runs good so I don’t want to sell it but my friends give me a rough time, saying that I’ll soon be able to put antique plates on it.
I had a good run at the mill. I worked there for 18 years and during that time I worked with a lot of good people. We all worked well together and everyone always helped each other out. Terry Millar was one of the drivers I met there and since then we have become good friends. We’ve spent a lot of time together both at work and at play. We usually try to park close together at the Big Rig Weekend shows with a bunch of other guys like Jason McInnis and Scott Watkins.
I was at BC Big Rig Weekend one year when I mentioned to the guys that I was thinking of leaving the mill. The word got around and later that day I was offered a job driving gravel truck. I decided it was time to try something different again so I parked my truck and took the job. Unfortunately, I found that I got bored doing the same thing all day going from the job site to the dump site and back again.
It wasn’t long before I put my truck back on the road and I hired on with Go Transport who have a tractor service. I have been there three years now and I enjoy it because there is always a variety of work. For the first three weeks or so I was dispatched to a different company every day but now I’m dispatched fairly steady to the same company.
There are some great advantages of working with a tractor service. First, it is good if you like to do something different every day. Another advantage is that you can usually get time off when you want because they just dispatch a different truck in your place. This really comes in handy if you want to get ready for a truck show or a parade. Both of which I do each year.
Big Rig Weekends are a tradition now and I’ve also been participating in The Island Equipment Owners Association Lighted Truck and Food Drive Parade in Victoria for the last eight years.
Twenty years ago, when my kids were quite small, we were goofing around one Christmas when we decided to put a Christmas tree on my old cab-over. First we bolted a pipe to the headache rack and then we tied the tree to the pipe. Then we decorated it with some bows and it looked pretty good. The next year my dad took a regular string of Christmas lights and, since this was before inverters were common place, he re-wired it for 12 volt lights so that year I had lights on the tree too.
Each year we would add something new like an inverter and more lights and then in 2001 I heard about a Christmas truck parade on Vancouver Island. I made some calls and was invited over, so I decorated the truck added some extra lights and caught the ferry over. It has just escalated from there to the point that I now have a full Christmas theme each year and lots of lights.
The Island parade is unbelievable. They started out with about twenty five trucks the first year and it grew so much that they now have to limit it to eighty-five trucks. It starts in Oak Bay and runs for thirty-five kilometres and the whole route is lined with people. Restaurants along the route are booked a year in advance for Christmas parties and people are even bussed in from retirement homes. This year they estimated that well over 100,000 people came out to watch the parade and over 7,000 lbs. of nonperishable food products were collected. All donations are given to the Mustard Seed Food Bank the West Shore Service Clubs Christmas Hamper Fund Society.
The next morning I came back for the Surrey Santa Parade of Lights. Pro-Trucker Magazine organized the truck end of the parade and ten trucks from the Island came over joining another fifteen or so from the mainland. We met at the Nordel weigh scales and after turning on all the lights we traveled down highway 91 to highway 10 and then out to Cloverdale. It was four lanes all the way so it was easy to keep everyone together. The trucks entered the exhibition grounds just in time to follow the regular parade through the streets of Cloverdale.
It was the first time that trucks have been involved in this parade and the reaction of the crowd was amazing. The route goes down main street which is only two lanes wide so you are very close to the spectators. The looks on the faces of the children was priceless. Food and toys were collected along the route for The Surrey Food Bank and the Christmas Bureau.
Over the years I’ve tried a few different jobs but I’ve always come back to trucking. I love the freedom, I’m my own boss and I’m not tied down to a desk – life doesn’t get much better. I’ve met, worked with, and formed lasting friendships with a lot of good, honest, working people and all things considered, it’s worked out very well.
Some things just aren’t meant to be and Michelle and I are no longer together but we are still good friends. We talk on the phone quite often and see each other now and then at family functions. The kids are all grown up and have left home. James is a paramedic and Nicole, after spending the last three years as a pre-school teacher, is starting a new career. As for me, for now, I guess I’ll just keep on truckin’…