Our April Rig of the Month driver is John Prankie of Grande Prairie, Alberta. This is his story…I was born and raised near Pembroke, Ontario, in the Ottawa Valley and I started trucking back in the mid seventies while looking for a change from working the family farm.

I have many fond memories from back then of hauling livestock, hay, and farm machinery across Ontario, Quebec, and the northeast US. I gained experience by hauling for friends in the business and then finally for myself. I started out driving body jobs and then moved on to tractor trailers.

In the spring of 1979, like many others, I got the urge to head West with my wife, Joan, and our one year old son, Gerald. I worked in Manitoba for two years for the Esso agent in Rivers hauling grain and fertilizer with a 1980 Ford Louisville and tandem Doepker hopper bottom trailer. Then, shortly after my second son, Jeff, was born in 1981, we moved to Grande Prairie, Alberta.

The “Oil Boom” was on in those days and I went to work right away for Esso hauling fuel to rigs in the area.

While working for the Agent for the Esso Bulk plant and Engro Fertilizers, I went from the fuel truck to a brand new Mack Superliner and some A-train seven axle end dumps. I hauled fertilizer and agricultural lime out of southern Alberta to the bulk plants and farmers around the Grande Prairie area. I also spent a winter in northern Alberta hauling fuel to drilling rigs in the High Level and Rainbow Lake area. This was a great job until the oil patch slowed and the west fell on hard times over the National Energy Policy. Many of the rigs and equipment were sold off and they were moved south to Oklahoma and Texas.

Work became scarce in Alberta back then so in 1983 I moved my family back to Ontario to be closer to our relatives. I quickly found steady highway work hauling baled hay to the horse race tracks in Pennsylvania. It was good work but wasn’t an easy job as I hand-bombed the hay both on and off the trailer. I also hauled bagged wood shavings in vans for horse bedding to the race tracks in the eastern and southern states and dry freight back to Canada.

The long hauls were good when my sons were young, and before they were in school, because it gave me the opportunity to take them along with me. On occasion Joan and I would leave the kids with their Grandparents and she would come with me. It was a lot lonelier on the road back then, as we didn’t have the convenience of cell phones, so it was great when I had company on the trips.

My son, Gerald, was five years old in 1983 when we made a memorable trip to Philadelphia in a ‘79 Kenworth cab-over. We were parked for the night at a truck stop in Scranton, PA. when the truck caught fire from a battery cable that had rubbed through on the frame rail. I was hauling a van load of wood shavings and there were a few scary moments trying to put the fire out. I had already emptied my small fire extinguisher when a state trooper pulled up. He managed to keep it from spreading with his fire extinguisher until I could get the batteries disconnected to stop the arcing.

There wasn’t too much damage but the sparks had started some grease on fire and the flames from the burning grease and plastic air lines melted the bunk heater hoses so we lost all the antifreeze.

The State Trooper let us warm up in his car and then he took me to a phone so I could call dispatch. I was surprised when the company owner turned out to be quite upset at me for not just letting it burn! Apparently, he would have been just as happy to collect the insurance. To be honest, that scenario hadn’t even crossed my mind. I just wanted to save the truck so we could get back home. We ended up having the truck towed to a repair shop and after a couple days it was back together and we were on the road again.

One night in late 1984, I heard a local guy talking on the C.B. saying they needed someone to haul dry freight in a reefer from southern Ontario into Texas and California and then bring produce back to Toronto and Ottawa. When I got home I gave him a call, and shortly after that I was in a brand new ‘85 W900 Kenworth with a 60” bunk. This was the nicest truck I had driven up until then but the real bonus was - no more eastern U.S.!

It was a nice change to run across the wide open western states and I was a little hesitant but I found that it was fairly easy to find my way around to deliver freight into San Francisco and Los Angeles. This job gave me as many miles as I wanted and I got to take my wife and sons along on some of these trips too. We have a lot of pictures and good memories from those days.

I even took my wife with me to San Francisco for our tenth anniversary, something we never would have had the opportunity to do on our own. I dropped the trailer off to get loaded and we spent a couple days bobtailing and travelling as tourists around Fisherman’s Wharf.

I also used to pick up loads from the vineyard areas of Northern California where I got to see a lot of nice quality fruit and produce that we never seemed to see in Canadian grocery stores at that time.

In 1988, with a wife and two boys at home and me being gone for 10 to 12 days at a time, I decided it was time to get off the road for a while. They have always been very supportive of my trucking career but I felt I was missing a lot of their young lives. I started doing local construction and equipment operating jobs. Those jobs kept me around home, but I wasn’t making the income I was used to and I really missed being out on the road.

We had a bit of money saved up, so for summer holidays we took a family camping trip from Ontario to Alaska. We wanted to see the North but I also wanted to see what the job situation was like back in Alberta. In the fall of 1988, we sold our home in Ontario and decided it was time to get back to Grande Prairie. It is a place that we have always enjoyed.

I went into business in Grande Prairie doing construction contracting and some short term local trucking jobs. In the winter of ‘91 I travelled north to Fort Nelson, B.C., where I managed Tackama Forest Products’ logging camp. During break-up I headed north to Watson Lake in the Yukon where the Sa Dena Hes mine was being built. Logging was very busy at the time with most of the timber being hauled south to the Tackama plywood plant in Fort Nelson. This whole area was very busy and, since there was a shortage of skilled help, there was lots of work for good pay.

That summer I hauled Barite concentrate, a drilling mud additive, in Super B clam dumps from Fireside, BC, at mile 543 on the Alaska Highway to Watson Lake. There it was processed, bagged, and shipped to distributors in Alberta. Many of those miles are pretty unforgiving like the Army Hill, Contact Creek and Iron Creek areas. I have to admit I was pretty happy to be up there because when I first started trucking I heard many stories about the Alaska Highway and some of the famous steep pulls along it like Sikanni Chief, Steamboat, Summit, Peterson, and Mile 475. With the hairpins and switchbacks, gravel sections, and winter conditions that can prevail even in July in places like Summit, these stories usually ended with the story teller saying, “You aren’t a real trucker until you’ve hauled on the Alaska Highway.” However over the past many years of construction, cutting down the grades, doing huge fills to build up the roadbed, new bridges, and rerouting, the highway is much improved today.

After travelling back and forth between Watson Lake and Grande Prairie every couple of months to see the family; in 1994 I finally sold the house in Grande Prairie and moved everyone to Watson Lake.

We really enjoyed living in the Yukon with its friendly people and lots of fishing and camping close by. It was also a good opportunity to teach my sons how to operate heavy equipment and drive trucks. The town itself was laid back and moved at a little slower pace so it was easy to get the use of trucks and equipment from friends to show them. They both finished high school, and got their class 1 licences there. My son, Gerald, worked with me doing construction and backhoe work, and we also built a large shop and office. We operated our construction and backhoe business as well as the Byers Transport Depot from this shop and yard. We got to know many of the drivers from Byers in Edmonton and Vancouver as they did their weekly runs to Whitehorse. We also met many others from Points North, Pacific Northwest and a hand full of other companies that ran north in those days. 

In 1999, my son, Jeff, left home to attend university in Alberta and Gerald decided to move back to Grande Prairie. This left Joan and I as “empty nesters” in Watson Lake with the kids 700 miles away.

Gerald found work operating cat and hoe at first, and then went on to oil patch trucking, which he enjoyed the most. Two years later, my wife, Joan, and I decided to be closer to the boys and we moved back to Grande Prairie as well. In 2002, when he was 24, Gerald bought his first truck, a black ‘97 Peterbilt 379L and a tridem tanker. He worked as a lease operator hauling oilfield fluids.

Over the next year the oil patch picked up so I got back into the seat. I drove for a few different companies, hauling mud to the rigs, contaminated dirt in an end dump, and fluid tankers. I also pulled the tanker around with Gerald and helped out with his maintenance around the shop.

Then, in the fall of ‘03, I reacquainted with an old friend from Grande Prairie, Wally Enns. I had met Wally back in ‘88 in Whitehorse when we were on family vacation and he was hauling groceries up there for Horne and Pitfield. We had a lot in common with trucking and hauling north to the Yukon so I had kept in touch with him. We had many breakfasts at the Golden Inn in Grande Prairie over the years. Wally had two Freightliner trucks at that time. He drove one himself and his friend, Rod Newbery, drove the other hauling machinery and freight around Alberta and B.C.

Wally had gone on his own to haul deck freight in the early ‘90’s and over a fifteen year span he built up a great reputation, customer base, and an unbelievable number of loyal friends. Unfortunately, he had been battling cancer for a number of years and finally decided that he needed to find a group to buy him out and carry on the business. He approached us and the idea of Gerald and I working with him and taking over seemed to be a good fit.

In September of ‘03 Gerald and I decided that this was what we had always wanted to do. We would be working together hauling deck freight and specialized loads on the highway and we would also be helping out a friend. So Gerald got rid of the tanker, we built some lowboy ramps on the truck and leased on with Wally. I got back into driving the ‘97 Pete full time while Gerald got acquainted with the existing customers as he drove Wally’s truck and learned the dispatch and management side of the business.

In late ‘03 Wally sold his grey ‘97 Freightliner to a friend in Saskatchewan, and we bought out the remaining 2000 Freightliner and trailers. We kept his driver Rod, from Edmonton, on board and changed the name from Enn’s Trucking to Spectra Trucking Ltd. We chose the name “Spectra” as we haul a wide variety of colors and makes of equipment and freight.

Wally’s health seemed to quickly worsen and we lost him to cancer on January 14, 2004. I was honoured to be able to take him for his last ride. We built a checker plate aluminium deck for the back of the Pete and this is where we placed his casket for the journey from the church to his final resting place at Scenic Heights. Our family and many of his family and friends really thought this was a great way to honour such a well respected, veteran trucker.

We have really enjoyed taking over the business from where Wally left off. In November ’04 we added veteran lease operator, Dan Merklin, from Grande Prairie to our crew. Since then we have also picked up a couple more black Pete’s, the ‘05 379 that Rod drives and an ‘07 Legacy Class 379L for Grande Prairie driver Trevor Loomis. We have also acquired a couple more double drop lowbeds, a double drop trombone, and a 9 axle heavy haul lowbed to go along with the stepdeck and super B’s.

My younger son, Jeff, has also come on board which has taken a lot of pressure off Gerald and me. Having worked for a chartered accounting firm, Jeff has taken over the position as Spectra’s office manager. He runs the paperwork dept, which there is no shortage of in this business, and he also helps with truck servicing and polishing.

Business was good and, like any driver, I had my favourite among our small fleet of four trucks – it was the old ‘97 Pete. It has an N14 525 Cummins, a 48” tall bunk, and I’ve always liked that style of dash and interior. I have a fondness for older unique trucks and have always had that “pride in my ride” that many owner operators have.

One day I was reminiscing to my sons about how you don’t see many old cabovers on the road anymore and how I always liked driving them back in the 80’s. Then one day in December of ‘07 Gerald stopped by the house with a truck trader and said, “There’s a ‘94 double bunk cabover Pete 362 for sale but it’s down in Nanaimo, B.C.” Gerald was a little surprised when I phoned him the next morning and said, “I hope you don’t need me for a couple days, because I just booked a flight to the Island to look at that truck”.

It ended up being the right price and the chance for me to drive a truck I’d always wanted. I made the deal on the spot and bobtailed it home where we worked to rig it up for equipment hauling. We also added a bit of character with a drop visor, new LED lights, and some new 8” pipes.

Some of you readers may know the truck from around B.C. It started its life running for Aggressive wearing their red and white paint scheme and then it was painted white with a blue frame for CPX Express. It has 1.9 million km on a 3406E CAT 460 Peak engine, an 18 speed transmission, 46 rears with 4 way lockers and 3.90 gears on 22.5 rubber.

I have to admit that it is nice to have the biggest bunk in our fleet and only a 205” wheelbase. It rides really smooth and the short aluminum frame makes it 1,000 kgs lighter than the other trucks and it’s a metre shorter. This comes in handy when pulling our doubledrops where we always seem to get heavy on the drives before we can get the weight back onto the tridem.

I’ve had this truck on the road since early ‘08 and Gerald now drives the ‘97 to preload and unload as well as to fill in where needed. He still dispatches the rest of us, and the five trucks seem to be working out quite well.

I still hope to get this “classic gem” painted black and polished, to match our other Spectra units. I really enjoy working on the truck at the shop - almost as much as I like being out on the road with it. I have put about 80,000 km on it so far, and I’ve replaced a lot of parts, so it still has many more miles left in it.

I guess it’s a lot like me; I turn 60 this year and will stay trucking as long as I can. I like hauling a different load to a different place each time and I enjoy the many great people I meet along the way. In the past five years, we have been all over Alberta, B.C., Yukon, NWT and Saskatchewan. We do a lot of local work around Grande Prairie and Edmonton as well. 

The industry has changed a lot over the years but old lifers like me will just have to adapt to the new regulations and technology and keep on truckin’. It’s in our blood.