The East coast portion was from Ontario to the Maritime Provinces on the Atlantic coast. The company was using all Owner/Operators. Jack Snape was the largest operator in that division. He had five of his own trucks, while the other six or seven were independently, owned and operated. The fact that his wife was the branch manager, presented a bit of friction among the other Operators.
The company approached Jack with an offer to purchase the East division. He owned and controlled most of the equipment anyway. The deal went through and Jack took it over.
The first thing he did was to change the name, and presented new colours for the company. The name changed from Trans Canada Highway Express to J.C. Snape, Maritime Ontario Express Lines. The colour he chose was a medium blue, with a white stripe as trim.
He was looking to replace a driver that ran away to get married. When I showed up on his doorstep there was no hesitation on hiring a past, Trans Canada Driver. The road test was to hook up to a reefer trailer in the yard, fire up the reefer and then spot it into a door that was so awkward that if it had another coat of paint on the trailer, there would not be enough room to get it in. Fortunately, I impressed him enough with my one shot at the dock that he said to load up and be ready to head down East. I had the job.
I had been down East a couple of times a few years earlier by car, to visit a friend in the service. Truck wise this was my first trip down that way. There were no expressways, and it was all old narrow roads. Sometimes the road would pass between a farmer's front porch and his barn. It was a completely new ballgame for me, altogether different from the Rocky Mountains and the sprawling prairies.
When the trailers were loaded, John M. was heading out at the same time as I was. He became my guiding light, and I stuck to him like a magnet. He was from Nova Scotia, and was French Acadian, fluent in English and French with no accent in either. I had not had any experience trucking through Quebec, and had no knowledge of the language. John and I ran countless trips together and he had me speaking enough French to get along on my own.
There were no logbooks in Canada in those days. You loaded and unloaded your own freight, no pallets, and rare to come across a lift truck at a delivery point. You slugged freight and ran until you could not go another inch, then flaked out for a few hours then carried on again.
The road in New Brunswick, (north of Fredericton) ran along side of the St John River. It was hilly, narrow, and with bad twists and turns. Bill K was driving a conventional Autocar day cab. (No sleeper) He was heading for his first drop at Fredericton NB. About ten, twelve miles north of town he broke over a hill and was getting it rolling down the other side. There was a blind entrance to the highway about half way down. The downhill was a cut through the bank, and there was no shoulder to use in any emergency. Just as he was approaching a hidden intersection, a small pickup truck pulled out in front of him with no warning. Having no space to manoeuvre in, Bill gave it a hard crank to the left, to avoid the p/u. The bank in front of him was about eight or nine feet high, he ramped up the bank and flew into the air, nose-diving right into a small bungalow home. The tractor crashed through the living room wall, taking the whole house three feet off its foundation, and coming to a stop across the other side of the room after hitting the iron wood stove and exploding it into pieces. The woman in the kitchen found herself outside on the ground in a daze. (Amazingly, not seriously hurt) the kids had just moments earlier, left for school. When all the dust settled, Bill found himself upside down, with his head on the floor and his feet out the window. The tractor and the reefer on the nose of the trailer were completely in the living room. It was a miracle that Bill or anyone else was not seriously hurt. The p/u driver was charged. Since then, after the repairs, the truck became my exclusive use. It was the same rig that I was locked into, by (what he thought) was a Good Samaritan and damn near froze. That was a separate story.
In the next year or so, other things happened, such as the time that three of us had been booked in to load frozen fish at Lunenburg NS. Our office and small yard was in Halifax. It was about an hours drive down to Lunenburg, on the old coast road, providing the weather was clear. The fish plant had only one door for shipping at that time. No mater how many trucks went down for a load, it was first come, first served. If you were last, it could be all day before you get loaded and away. It was in the dead of winter, when the three of us took off for our loads. As you might expect, it turned into a race, to get loaded first and be at least ½ day ahead of the other two. It was cold that morning, just highballing down that old twisty coast road. Les got up front and stepped on it. He was going to load first and that was that. The wind was blowing onto shore and the waves were crashing up and onto the highway. Soon as the water hit the road, it would freeze into a coat of black ice. Les was so involved with his racing that he came onto a real tight curve coated with ice, to fast. The steering control was gone and he sailed strait ahead, and out into the ocean. The vision was fantastic, water spraying like a PT boat, in hot pursuit. The whole rig was in the ocean. Fortunately, the parking spot in the bay was about five feet deep.
Quite a sight, seeing a truck parked in the ocean and the driver wearing a winter parka looking at us out of the window. The water was up to the steering wheel and he had to Open the door and step out and start swimming for shore. We got him into a heated truck, and once over the shock, he started saying, DID YOU SEE THAT? Man that was some trip. A lot of stories and razzing came out of that incident. One was that once they got the truck back on the road again, that every time it started up, pollywogs and seaweed would fly out of the stack. Every time we went out for a beer, the subject of his misfortune would be brought up, to the embarrassment of Les.
There was a hotel in Halifax that was a standard watering hole for truckers that had to lie over. It was down town and near the docks, and was called THE BEAVER LODGE HOTEL.
The trucks could not load on Sundays, and lying around was boring at times. Nova Scotia said that if you ate in an establishment with a dining room you could be served beer, or wine. So about six to eight of us laying over would go into the dinning room, order one plain cheese sandwich, leave it in the middle of the table (to be legal) and drink quarts of beer till we were thrown out at closing time. The sandwich cost 50 cents divided by the number of drivers attending. Of course, we always drank legally on Sundays, with our required meal on the table. By the closing time, the sandwich dried out so much, that the bread dried out and curled on the edges.
This one week end in particular. On Saturday, it was the final closing. The hotel would close its doors for good. As it came to the closing time, they went and closed the doors and gave us free beer until way into the early hours. Therefore, if you are closing shop for good, this is the way to say thanks and goodbye to your steady customers.
One last incident for this article, I went to Clarks Harbour at the bottom end of the province for a load of fish. Just off shore, a small Island called, Cape Sable Island. That is where the fish plant was located. The roadway was all stones, like driving through a gravel pit. It was just a little trail out to the island. I did not pay to much attention to it. Water on both sides with about eight or nine feet of roadway being out of the water, and about ½ a foot above the water line. It was a one-way trip until I got out to the fish plant.
There were three people out there waiting to load me. I was beat by this time and was going to flake out as soon as I was loaded, and had the paperwork. The loading was finished in super fast time, and then they jumped in their p/u truck and took off. I was alone on the Island now, and figured this is a nice quiet place for a few hours sleep.
Sometime later, a banging on the door woke me up. There was a person standing in a small rowboat beside my truck. He asked if I had planed to stay here until tomorrow before leaving. I said hell no, why? I finally realized that he was standing in a boat and the water was up to my wheels. What is going on here? He said if I did not leave now the tide would be too deep for me to get off the island. Where is the roadway? I asked. Follow me and do not stray off course. I was right on his stern all the way. Once we got across, he started laughing, and told me of others, not knowing, having the same problem. You people from Upper Canada do not have a clue about the sea.
There were many things happening on that job. Notorious blizzards in the winter, horrendous floods in the spring, but as always, the Maritimers were a people who took everything in stride and never left you stuck. It was a great time while it lasted.
William ( Diesel Gypsy ) Weatherstone.