Different places, New Highways

Thank you so much Ducks!

Winters can be pretty brutal in the far North, with terrible cold & HUGE amounts of snow, but in a way, the lack of traffic is a blessing...less fools on the road. And believe me .... I KNOW my limits, there are many times I will simply shut down cause the roads are just too bad to travel on, but truthfully it's all what you get used to.

Winter can & does last up to TEN months up there, so you never really get out of the habit of winter driving, then in the very short "summer" season there's 24 hours of daylight, so I tend to drive at "night" cause I don't like the tourist traffic. Now all the people who winter in the south, but live in Alaska are making there way back, so there will be more traffic, but in winter, there's very little.

I don't like traffic much, so the lack of it is no concern to me. There are many times I have driven all night & only seen one or two vehicles the whole time! As I've said before there are mostly regulars drivers up there, we don't get alot of "newbies" so we all know one another & look out for each other & if you are on a regular run like I am, if I wasn't seen in the usual places, the guys start looking for me. I've gotten alot of "where the heck have you been?" when I'm running late or leave a day later than normal.

 

I was born & raised in north/central Alberta, farm kid, so I guess you could say I was definitely raised in the climate. I've been trucking in the far North off & on for 30 years. It's where I started my career back in '79, right out of high school...I learned how to drive on the farm, back in those days farm kids could get what was called a "farm" license at 13. You could operate anything your family owned, or with permission, neighbour's farm equipment, just NOT on the highway. We could drive on rural roads, from farm to farm so to speak. Then at 14 got my "Learner's Permit" & 16 my Driver's License, then I could be a "learner" for a Class One, which is similar to your CDL, but is not a separate license like it is down there, then at 18 I got that, cause you can't get your Class One here before you're 18, even tho I was driving Semi trucks from the time I was 14.

My very first job was running in the far North, the roads were all gravel back then & REALLY bad! The only pavement was near Edmonton, & the only 4 lane road was from Edmonton to Calgary. So it was a very good way for me, at least to learn the "ropes". I learned very quickly how to take care of myself.

When I had been driving about 10 years I got my first job running stateside, I thought I'd died & gone to heaven. I didn't know anything about truckstops or interstate highways, they just don't exist up here like they do down there. Border crossing was a challenge tho, you could spend all day going from broker to broker getting your load cleared, not like it is now. There was no such thing as PARS, PAPS or FAST.

I decided after 7 years of that I just didn't like the cross border stuff anymore, so went back to the North, something that go into my blood at a very early age & that I could never quite dilute enough to really enjoy going other places.

People tease me about being "bitten by the Northern bug" all the time. I have to agree, when it bit me it never really did let go.

 

The biker... I just couldn't believe my eyes! Cause not 15 miles before was snowing so hard you couldn't see 20 feet in front of you! And the night before it was 20 below! He stopped at the tiny little village of Teslin for gas & I noticed he had EUROPEAN plates on that bike! No self-respecting Canadian or American biker would be foolish enough to be out yet!