Road Trip

James was hired by a local fellow to drive his semi to haul grain. This of course means learning how to handle 'super B' trailers which essentially are two full length semi trailers hooked together. This does make for an extra long unit to be driving around and does take extra care in turning corners. Backing up the unit also is quite a bit more complex than a single trailer unit.

Anyhow, James had a dry run on Tuesday to get familiar with the rig and then he got the trailers loaded up with a load of lentils that were destined for Wilkie, Sask. Now seeing as Wilkie is the town where I was born and lived for a few years, I thought it would be a treat to travel out that way with James as a passenger.

The plan was to depart Hanley at 7 a.m. and to return somewhere around 3 p.m. James and I got to the truck just before 7 a.m. and we ran into our first problem. The fellow that was showing James the ropes set the preheater to come on but he neglected to set the darn thing to the right time. So the preheater came on at 1 a.m. and ran for two hours (ie until 3 a.m.). So at 7 a.m. when James turned the key, the Kenworth just grunted a few times and that was that.

James turned the preheater on to start warming things up and then he got hold of the owner to arrange a tow truck to come and boost us. The truck was parked at one of the local garages and it opened up at 7 a.m. so at least we could slip inside and have a coffee while we waited for the tow truck to do it's magic. When the tow truck hooked up the cables to boost the semi, it had to just leave them in place for awhile to get the batteries warmed up enough to take a charge.

At 8:30 a.m. (give or take a few minutes) we pulled out of Hanley heading towards Wilkie. By the time we got to Rosetown, both James and I had to hit the washroom from all the darn coffee we drank. So after a quick pit stop we were enroute once again.

We finally pulled into Wilkie around noon and proceeded to get in line to unload our lentils. By 1:30 p.m. we were done and 'on the road' back to Kenaston for another load. All went fairly well and we strolled into the house at 6:30 p.m.

Let me tell you the walk up from the garage was brutal. The wind was coming right at us and we were almost frozen to the bone in the short walk home. But we did make it safe and sound.