Daryl Wear from Chilliwack, BC, is our April 2010 Rig of the Month Driver. Very well known in the industry, Daryl comes from a trucking family and is a familiar face at BC Big Rig Weekend. This is his story:

I was born at Burnaby, BC in June of 1963 to Ted and Anne Wear. I have one brother, Larry, who is 12 years older than me, which was more like growing up with an uncle than a brother. My dad owned a dump truck for a while back in the `50`s but he sold it and spent the next 33 years working for B.C. Hydro and Gas Authority which is now Teresan.

After graduating in 1969 my brother Larry also went to work For B.C. Hydro then, during the early `80`s, he helped Dad start a trucking company called Ted Wear & Sons Trucking. The whole company consisted of a single 1970 gas pot tandem Chevy dump truck that worked for the City Of Vancouver. Then came the big company expansion, they bought a second truck, a 1966 Diamond T which worked there as well.

We had this Irish guy, Jamie Smythe, who worked for Dad for quite a few years. One day when I was 16, Dad was out of town when Jamie called and said the clutch had let go in the Diamond T. He said he thought he could baby it back to the house so, skipping out or school, I took off in the pick-up to rent a tranny jack. I was soon lying under the truck,  on the side of the road doing the clutch with Jamie. It was about that time that I started thinking about a life of being self employed.

The Diamond T was in a bad accident in early `86 and the frame was broke in half. My brother Larry, family friend Bob Crann, my uncle John and a lot of other volunteers rebuilt the truck which made it possible for it to be displayed at Expo`86 in Vancouver. We still own the Diamond T but it hasn’t worked a day since then.

I was your typical teenager, playing with cars and 4X4`s and going to a lot of house parties - yet I still managed to graduate from Burnaby Central in 1981.

At one of those parties I met Dave Segarich who found me a month later, in my parent’s garage, working on my `70 Duster. Dave was a couple years older than me and worked for his dad at GDA Automotive. Dave looked at my car and then asked me to go to work for him. I thought wow, that’s cool, I’m 19 years old and someone comes and offers me a job! Here it is 28 years later and Dave still calls once in a while to run ideas past me about some project he has tackled.

GDA closed its doors a short time after I went to work for them so I went to work at Trans-Canada Glass, which later became Speedy Auto Glass. I worked there until 1986 when I decided to get my class 3 with air. At that time Dad had just bought two ex-City of Vancouver International dump trucks, with 8V71 350`s without jakes. (Like they work anyway.) I remember an old guy once told me that it was a toss up as to what worked better at slowing you down, the Jake in an old Detroit engine or just opening your vent windows. He seemed to think you got more drag from the vent windows.

Once I got my license I drove one of the Internationals doing four loads a day out to Burns Bog. It was a start - but it drove me crazy. The first day I showed up the city crew was there and they looked like they needed help so I jumped out of the truck and grabbed a shovel. Well the whole crew stopped and said, “Holy crap, a truck driver that knows how to use a shovel”. That was my crash course in how to stay in the truck and read the paper.

I drove and wrenched on Dad’s trucks till about 1993 when I thought I was smart enough to own my own truck. Needing a break from the family business, I called up Dave Whalley from Pacific Blasting to see if he knew of any work. By the end of that phone call I had bought Dave’s old LTL9000 and had a job at Pacific Blasting working with him and some old guy named Jake Mills.

I paid for the truck on a Saturday and left for Castlegar on Sunday with a demolition trailer half loaded with gear for a project at Celgar Pulp Mill. It was an experience because up to that point I had never driven highway or tractor trailers. After working in Castlegar for 3 months I remember the day I left for home, somewhat happy yet scared. It was November 4th and we were supposed to finish that day then head home in the morning. At mid morning it started to snow hard so I said I’m out of here. I threw my duffle bags in the cab and headed up the hill on Highway 3.

I followed a Trimac tanker up the hill and then into a pullout. He was throwing chains on, so, naive as I was back then, I asked if he could give me some pointers  as I was a city driver and had not driven very much in snow. He said the first thing I should do was put my chains on. My reply was, “What chains?” He looked at me and mumbled something about being nuts so I jumped in the truck and drove away. I can still remember seeing him in my mirrors standing there shaking his head. I never saw him again and somehow made it past Grandforks where the last of the snow was. I guess the early years of four wheeling and driving Dad’s dump trucks with cheap scabby tires taught me how to be creative for traction.

After working at Pacific for a couple of years, and one of my relationships coming to an end, I bought a house in Abbotsford and started to haul demolition trailers for Russ Crawford at Big Bin out of Port Kells. Over the next three years I got to meet, work and learn a lot from some good guys like Ray Bolt who is still one of my good friends.

I remember one job we did where we were dumping our loads in North Van under the Second Narrows Bridge. This is where I found out that 65,000 volts can jump on a horizontal plane for up to about 25 feet. All I remember was a boom and looking in my mirrors to see flames shooting from my trailer tires. I heard some of them blow as I quickly hit the controls to drop the box. The guy that was spotting for me came over rubbing his eye’s saying that he couldn’t see anything and had got welders flash from my tires. As I was waiting for the box to come down, he walked to the back of the trailer to look at the tires. One more blew as he was standing there and when I jumped out to check on him he was now complaining of not being able to hear anything. We sat on a log and watched as one more tire blew up and then a cop showed up saying he had reports of a bomb blast. We figured that must have been when the transformer blew off the pole.

A month later I sold that truck and bought a 1988 W900 day cab. While still working for Big Bin I did some work in the Valley for some of his other customers like AMPM Land Clearing. This was fine for a while but it wasn’t long before I wanted to get away from the dusty job sites and try something different again.

I went to work for Star Systems in Aldergrove, where I worked with some good guys and met some interesting people. While there I was lucky enough to learn how to lowbed from some of the best in the business like Jim Drenka, Geoff Coatman, and the late Chuck Gensick.

Jim was the first to introduce me to bush work. He would haul the main loads and I would follow him with the parts or fall off loads. One time he was hauling an old 009 Madill rubber tire yarder from Boston Bar and I was following with a 966 loader and other odd parts (like an outhouse). We left Boston Bar around 6 am with a crew that followed us through Revelstoke, across the Shelter Bay ferry, to Trout Lake. It was quite a trip. We had to change four tires on the side of the highway then, past Revelstoke on highway 23, it was dark and snowing to the point that we all stopped while one of the pick-up`s went ahead to check out snow conditions on the hill. I guess I was a little tired because I nodded off and when I opened my eyes again I was sitting in the middle of the road, with my truck running, and there was no one else around. I could still hear them on the VHF so I couldn’t have been asleep very long. I managed to catch up to them five minutes up the road.

When we got to the ferry ramp at Shelter Bay it was like driving down a long, snow covered boat launch, into a lake.  We all managed to get on to the ferry but Jim’s load was a little higher than he thought and it got wedged under the bridge of the boat. When the ferry ramp touched down on the other side they managed to free the yarder, but looking up the steep off ramp hill that was covered with snow, with no end in sight, didn’t look good at all. As we started up the windy road everybody else must have had the same thoughts because the radio went silent. Everyone was too worried about spinning out to chatter but we made it and the trip finished off safely. We all came away from that one with the usual few more grey hairs that you get on trips like that.

Geoff Coatman was a bit different. Anytime you wanted to find out where his load was it seemed that he was in a “Husky Card Lock” drinking coffee and catching up on the latest gossip. He used to tell me that the office would call him after giving him an impossible time to deliver and then freak because the customer was waiting. He said that when they would pressure him he would slow down and sometimes even stop for another coffee. He always said it wasn’t his fault that others had bad planning skills.

The late Chuck Gensick was always smiling and he always had something to say to anyone who would listen. He always stayed calm and if ever you wanted to find him he was usually at a truck stop catching up on the latest. I’ll never forget his business card. It showed his Cab-over hauling an excavator on a snow covered logging road. He was in the middle of a tight curve but the back of the trailer had slid off the road over the edge. The caption was, “Nothing was damaged but my pride”! I’ve always loved that saying.

One day my brother Larry decided to help me do an overnighter to Williams Lake where we had to unload then reload down the road and head over to Trail. Like I said earlier, Larry worked for Terasen and in his spare time drove the dump trucks for dad. Those were the trucks that had the Detroit two strokes without jakes so he was anxious to drive the Kenworth. It was late in the day when this trip fell together and  I drove up to Spences Bridge where Larry took over. I fell asleep for awhile until Larry yelled, “The motor stalled!” He was coming down into Clinton with the Jake on when he kicked it into neutral and let off of the throttle so the Jake stalled out the cat. I clued in to what happened right away and reached over and shut the Jake off. I told him to hit the key again as I turned away and went back to sleep. We had a good laugh just the other day about that story. I have to admit it was good to see the big brother panic and then have little brother help him out!

After working for three years at Star Systems I realized I didn’t want to haul lumber anymore and since there wasn’t enough bed work to keep me busy, I went back to hauling bins for an old co-worker, Larry Alexander, of the old “Alexander Trucking” family. He used to work with Ray Bolt and me at Big Bin and had started up a company called “Best Bin”. That was fun for a couple years until I bought a tridem gravel trailer from Don Mckenzie and went to work at the City Of Vancouver. Talk about going full circle. I worked there for a couple of years and kind of bounced around in my spare time running equipment and hauling the odd load for “Triton Transport”.

One day Darryl Verrault called me up and asked me to help him out for a day. I didn’t leave for two years. Doing local lowbedding with no bush work was kind of nice on my old Kenworth and me. It was kind of like having a real full time job. I’d show up at the office around 6am and there was always something to do. It wasn’t always what I’d like but there was always work.

While working for Darryl, I met Anita. We have been together for over four years now and she is one of the best things to come into my life. She used to own the organic flower mill in Chilliwack but gave that up and now just enjoys being my helper. When we have the time I’ll get on my old electra glide and Anita gets on her Ninja and we cruise the back roads. I built a `68 Camaro with a big block , six speed over the last 15 years and when we aren’t riding our bikes we hop in the Camaro and go to as many car shows as possible.

I was at Verraults for two years then I started hauling lowbed for Dave Blackal of Highland Lowbed Service out of Port Kells. After six months he offered to sell me the bed I was pulling which was a great trailer, tandem K-Line with a jeep. I bought it in January of 2008 and continued to work for him as I was building clientele of my own.

On September 18, planning to go on my own, I ordered a new booster for the trailer from K-line. The very next morning we were supposed to load a machine in Agassiz but on the way there, something happened that changed our lives. We had a bad head-on crash with a small car. Sadly, the girl in the car did not survive. It happened incredibly fast. I was completely in my own lane when I slammed on the brakes leaving over 100 feet of skid marks before she hit. I ended up with a badly broken right knee and Anita broke her nose. This accident took a tremendous toll on both of us and even now it is still very difficult to talk about.

The next six months were really rough. I had to put my mom in a care home so my dad could go in for an operation and he passed away while there, so mom stayed in the care home. Anita and I live in Greendale and during the big flood that year, our home was safe but my trailer and property was under water for about two weeks. It wasn’t until the end of Feb/09 that I was finally able to take my leg brace off for the last time. Over the next five months I spent time in and out of physiotherapy for my leg.

During that time I bought a `97 Longhood Pete off of Bob Martin. When I wasn’t in physio, I was down at Big Rig Collision explaining how I wanted this Ultra Cab with a stand up sleeper to look like a flat top 36’er the way it does today. I had Lickman Truck and trailer slide under a set of 46`s and built my own ramps. Over the 5 months I was at the shop pretty well on a daily basis making sure it was done the way I wanted it.

We got the truck and trailer on the road just in time for the 2009 BC Big Rig Weekend where we won two first place trophies, one for best paint and the other for best tractor trailer combo.

Just a couple weeks later, on the 23rd of July we were bobtailing past Dukes pub on our way to Abbotsford when, in the middle of the overpass, a Western Star that was west bound on the 209 off ramp ran a stop sign at about 10 miles an hour. I hit my air horn and stopped but he didn’t even brake. He just kept on coming and dragged his trailer right over my hood. He hit me so hard that he knocked out the front axle on his trailer and started to drag us backwards. That was worth another $20,000.00 and a month of down time.

Since September of `09, when we picked up the Pete from Big Rig, (for the last time I hope) things have been better. We get to do some challenging things from simple excavator moves to the fun recoveries we do with Al Quiring.  Al over the years has become a good friend and working with him is like going on a stag. You always have to bring some money, your passport and anything else you might need because you never know what will happen or where you’ll end up.

Life has shown that it can throw some pretty wicked curve balls sometimes but working for myself I can now pick and choose what loads I want and where or what I’ll put my equipment though. I just bought a `03 Aspen 10’ wide hydraulic tridem lowbed so I now have 8 axles and should be able to haul around 107,000 lbs.

When I turned 40, Jim Drenka said to me, “It’s downhill from here.” My reply was, “Great cause it`s been a bit of an up hill climb to get here.”

I’m now turning 47 this summer and I think I’m finally on the downhill slide, I have some wealth, some health and I have Anita, all the important things in life!

Readers can visit Daryl’s website at:

www.lowbeddaryl.com