New vaccine mandate coming soon . . .

You print up 100 resumes, get in your car, and drive from town to town, shake hands, drop off a resume which will have stapled to it a current photocopy of your drivers abstract.
Showing your face, and shaking hands is how you get on at a good company.
In this area, mailing or emailing something, it gets tossed or deleted, unread.
These guys are old school, and when you shake hands it better be firm, and while making eye contact.
That sending #### may work in Vancouver and area, but get to 100 mile house, and north, that will not cut it.
If I was you I would start in Vanderhoof, Fort st James, Burns Lake, and Houston.
Also stop at the tiny places in between, like Endako, Fort Fraser, Fraser Lake, Topley, Decker Lake, etc.
I know right now that places are hiring in at least 4 towns in the area.
You better be really good at chaining up, no fear, be absolutely fine with feeling the truck sliding around some, be respectful or expect to have your butt beaten, listen up for a while till you are good and proven yourself, learn quickly and not need extensive training because you won't get it.
And if you don't walk in the door in person to ask for the job, you will not stand a chance.
These are real men, their handshake is an iron clad deal because they mean what they say. Whining is not tolerated, over time is every day, you call kms Every 4 kms, once you get close to a truck coming at you then call every 2 kms, and you better be in a pull out when empty before the loaded truck gets to you, and if not you best intentionally drive off the road, they are coming fast, and you ####ed up and are now in their way, and they will hit you. If you don't clear a truck properly, you're fired. So you memorize every single pull out on every road. Piss off the owner, bush boss, or loader man, and you will be sitting waiting for a load a long time. Lie once, even a small lie, expect to get a good beating. You start early in the morning, and you finish whenever you finish. Normally we try not to follow each other, being close together is a pain in the ###, clutters the landing, and pisses off the other drivers. But when you first start, ask an experienced driver if you can run with them for a few days till you start figuring it out. But that doesn't mean that you tailgate like driving on the hwy. Running with them means staying back a 1000' minimum. That first day the lead truck will make calls for you and say plus 1.
If its dark out, which it is half the day, you park with your lights pointed into the bush, not down the road. These guys drive fast, I mean fast, for twisty roads that are super slippery and nasty hills.
When you have the window down, and are hanging out the side window to see the road, because the hill your climbing is so steep all you see out the windshield is sky, so hanging out the window lets you see the road. And that road is narrow, steep, icy or muddy, and if you screw up for a half second you will die as you roll off the edge of a cliff, then you know its steep. You can't get scared, not for a second, because fear will make you do something stupid, that is a normal day.
If you think that I am exaggerating, I promise you that I'm not. Call up a BC Logger north of Vancouver, and ask them.
When i heal enough to drive again, I will let you ride for a day with me, see how you like it. You can't be just OK with it. When you are logging, its a lifestyle choice, your in or your out.
It sounds like @AModelCat has driven logging truck in BC, ask him if you want to, he can confirm that I am not joking. It isn't for everyone, you need to be a bit mentally unstable to haul logs here.

 

Unfortunately never had a chance to drive one but spent a ton of time in the passenger seat of one. Loved every minute of it. Only wish I had a camera back then.

Definitely no time to screw around in the bush. They want the wood out and they don't have time to hold hands. If you're not on top of your game then things go sideways quick. I've seen some wild stuff happen out there. I witnessed something similar to this in the video in my early teens. Get a little too close to the edge or the road decides to give way under you and you're upside down in two seconds.

 

I've seen way too many crashes on logging roads.
Been to the funeral of a good man who rolled his truck 17 times down a cliff.
I was hauling longs, a truck didn't clear me correctly, he was a rookie. As he hadn't cleared me properly, when I came around the corner my logs did what is know in the industry as a "sweep" and it totaled a brand new western star 4900. That truck was about a month old, the owner put a newbie in it, it was his 3rd trip. Wasn't a thing that I could do when I come around the corner and saw him sitting there. He missed the pull out he should have been in, but didn't even get on the radio and let me know so I could have slowed down some. I was doing about 110 and my sweep tore that star to shreds. He got away alive, just minor injuries, and terrified. He never drove a logging truck again.
As I said its not for everyone.
Personally I love it, I get paid to have my daily dose of adrenaline, and hang out with amazing people.
Training is basically this. You get told to go haul logs from the bush, and what mill to take them to. End of training.
You better know how to drive, chain, and haul ### before you get there. The truck will be a manual transmission, day cab, have full lockers, wrappers, and chains. Its up to the driver to fix all small stuff themselves. You will probably drive slower on the hwy lots of the time, than you do in the bush. When you look in your mirror and see the trailer sliding all over the road, you don't even care, and you don't slow down.
When you see divots out of the snow banks all over the place, and huge chunks of snow on the road, that just means another trailer hit the snow bank, happens all the time, i mean all the time. The trailer is just really along for the ride, after the first 100 times you see it going sideways in the mirrors, you won't even blink anymore. If your flying into a corner and you are under steering bad, and the truck just refuses to turn, no worries, just lift your right foot and slap the jakes or retarded on full power for a half second, you just have to bust the drive tires loose and get the truck to pivot, then steer into the slide. If the trailer isn't wanting to turn, add throttle as you grab the trailer brake handle and yank on it and shove it back up quick. All you're doing is breaking trailer tire traction for a split second so it will drift around the corner. May God help you if the trailer gets sucked into the inside of the turn, it will suck the truck right into the ditch with it, and you'll have a crash that will still haunt your dreams 10 years later.
Loggers call that trailer brake lever the MAGIC HANDLE its there to drift your trailer around, and help you when you drop off the crest of a steep ### hill with a load of logs on.
If the thought of sliding all over the road up to 200 times a day, while doing hwy speeds scares you, stay the hell away from logging. Disputes are handled with a few punches thrown, and my being a woman doesn't buy me a free pass. I have been in a fist fight on the landing. Swing hard and fast, because one of you is going down, and it best not be you. If nobody gets fired, and often they don't, you then have to let go of whatever it was that had you two fighting to begin with. Let it go, and get back to work. Cuts heal, a dentist can replace a tooth if needed, and suck it up, be an adult, and get over it, we got logging to do. Cry babies can screw off, toughen up. You'll be cold, wet, muddy, covered in snow some days, and running up to the landing in 25 plus inches of snow in the morning is normal. You haul in the deep snow, until it eventually gets plowed, graders are slow, but nobody stops logging unless it snows 4' or more over night. When its deeper than your headlights on a tall standing logging truck, you will probably get a day off. If its less than headlight deep, chain up, drive fast, you need the momentum to get up hills. If your truck starts running hot, which you know because you look at the temp gauge every 30 seconds or more, well you have " Snow Pack" as its known. You stop, open the hood, and dig the snow out that is packed in there hard. Oh ya shut it off first, the fan will take your hand off easily. I can introduce you to a guy if you come to PG, he was digging out a snow pack a few years ago, he has 1 hand left.

If all of that sounds like fun to you, welcome to your new career.

 

One day I'll give it a shot. I recently took on another apprenticeship and have to get that finished up first.

 

Its a rush! Hwy hauls bore me.
Lets get on some back roads, and haul ###.
No room for light duty bumpers, or anything else for that matter.
It prepares you for life in general, hauling logs does. When someone attempts to mug you in a parking lot some night. Instead of fear, you laugh at them, then kick them in the balls so hard they can't even speak any longer. While they lay on the ground curled up and holding there balls, you step on their head as you walk away. Why, because no sissy mugger is going to intimidate you, you're a logger. When you launch your mountain sled over the edge of a cliff, and free fall, eventually hitting the snow again, your smiling, because #### its fun, sure isn't scary though.
It prepares you for most situations life throws at you.

 

I'm just itching to get the sled out. Two more weeks and I'll be on top of a mountain

 

What do you ride?
I have a 2021 Polaris RMK Khaos with 850 Patriot engine, added a turbo to it, 163" x 3" track, and for spring riding a 2020 Artic Cat Riot 800 with Cobra track. You probably know where the Torpy is, Barkerville, Pine pass, and McBride, those are the 4 main areas we ride. If you want to come ride with us, say when. We ride mostly weekends, its my baby sister with me always, and often some loggers go with us. I'll be missing a good part of this riding season, I'm a bit hurt right now. If you ride a doo doo, the guys will tease you, but it is meant in good fun. If you ride a yamanchor, they will really tease you, and will be buying everyone dinner and beers after the ride, as pay for helping you lift that heavy pig out the 40 times you got stuck. Four strokes have no place in the mountains, too much weight.
But despite the good natured teasing, they will welcome you openly, as they do anyone who loves riding sleds. They all ride a Polaris or Cat is all. Our group is drug and alcohol free while riding. The mountains are no place for a mind that is not clear. At dinner after the ride though, those men can slam back a serious amount of alcohol.
As I rarely drink, same with my sister, we usually all squeeze into just two trucks, go to dinner, and us two drive a truck each, whoever's trucks we took, back to the motel if in Barkerville or McBride. If riding the Pine pass, or Torpy, we camp, and bbq. My sled trailer is set up to camp inside of once we unload the sleds. You can even camp in the trailer with us if you wish. Bring a foamy and sleeping bag, also BYOB and BYOF. I have a 100 lb propane bottle that runs my heater and bbq.

 

Just about everything Pamela is saying is wayyy over exaggerated. I haul logs and it's literally the easiest trucking job I've had? And the trucks don't make nowhere near 400 per hour.

 

Forgot, in April, during break up, since we can't log, we head to the Torpy, stay 5 to 10 days. Its a large group more often than not. My sister and I each take our truck, due to the amount of fuel and supplie we need. She looks like a crazy bomber at the gas station filling up 45 gas cans and stacking them in her F150. Last year, someone called 911 on her, and cops came to the station full ights and sirens to question her intent.
All I could do was laugh.
They had her in the back of the cop car for about 10 minutes interrogating her, before they accepted the story.

 

You haul where?
Because you sure aren't hauling on our roads.
Plenty of easier areas to haul, but they also make way less $.
March of this year, I'll be back driving, I invite you to come ride with me for a day. While on the landing go ask the bush boss how much we make.