A couple of 1:25 scale models that I built, hoping to make them in 1:1 scale.
Anne was getting nervous. She’d already bankrolled me to the tune of almost half a million dollars, and we still hadn’t sold anything.
And just to make life interesting, my wife was pregnant with our first child. Which, under “normal” circumstances would have been a real blessing, but she didn’t want anything to do with God, and resented me for my new faith.
I’d found a job driving super B trains for a guy I met at church. He told me that it was a tough run and he only wanted guys who could handle it. They were 27 hour rounders, with no sleep, hauling lumber from northern BC. It was what’s called a “slip seat operation”. One truck, two drivers, but not at the same time. The first driver would drive empty straight to one of three places in Northern BC, two loaded for you, the other one you loaded yourself. It was 11 hours to the destination, two hours to load and tarp, then 14 hours straight back to Chilliwack. Once in Chilliwack, the second driver would hook onto an empty set of wagons and do the same thing while the guy who had just run the marathon went home to sleep. 24/7/365. Marshall already had two dedicated teams who loved it because the money was good. He added a third truck that I would slip seat with another driver. Just a tad illegal, but it was all about the money to him. He had a saying, “You know the saying, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease? WELL AROUND HERE IT GETS REPLACED!”” He was a slavedriver, but I needed the money.
At first it wasn’t so bad. He did have nice new equipment, which was nice. It paid $600 a trip, and since we could do 10 trips a month, it was good money. I admit to having to roll the windows down and stick my head out the window to get a blast of fresh cold air to stay awake coming through the Fraser Canyon, a lot. There was only one problem, he couldn’t find another driver to slip seat with me who could do it. They all quit after one or two trips. So, what did he suggest? That I could just do another one until he got a second driver! Buddy! I just did 27 hours straight, and you want me to do it again?! He said he’d allow me two hours for sleep. Oh, how kind of him.
After a few months of this, I was starting to burn out. I called Marshall when I was out of hours on my second logbook. His reply? “Logbooks are $1.39 at the truck stop!” There’s 168 hours in a week. You know how I know this? Because I worked all of them! I was running three logbooks, keeping track of everything so when I was inspected, they wouldn’t find any violations. I was a literal moving violation! Somehow, by the grace of God, and probably a host of angels riding with me, I never had an accident, or even got a ticket. But I was tired.
He never did get a second driver to spell me off, so I did the insane work of two, for 6 months. I remember listening to the radio preachers as drove through the night. J. Vernon McGee, Focus on the Family, Chuck Swindol, and a bunch of others. They all preached about how Jesus would be with us if we just trusted in Him. I was trusting! I was believing, and I was dying.
It started in my left hand. It was going numb and there was a pain in the left side of my neck. When your driving a truck, you steer with your left hand and shift with your right. (At least in North America lol) And flatbedding requires a lot of physical work, like strapping and tarping the loads, so my arms were wearing out. Add to that only eating garbage like A&W or crap from the fuel station in Prince George, I wasn’t getting the nutrition I needed. I was also smoking up to 4 packs of cigarettes a day, since most days were 24 hours, with the occasional power nap thrown in. I tried to compensate the numbness in my left arm by steering with my right, but in a super B, in the mountains, you never stop shifting, so that didn’t work too well. I remember one evening very well. As I was coming down Big Bar hill, where the radio signals quit, I started crying out to God. “Lord, Why am I here? How can my boss call himself a Christian and treat me like this? Where are You? Help me!”
And I rolled down the hill with 3 1/2 hours to go to Chilliwack, where I would drop the loaded trailers and hook on to an empty set and do it all over again.