2018 On the Road Again #12

Lord but that ground just outside of Morse was hard! But it didn't rain, it got just cool enough that the bugs went away and the wind finally died down almost completely. With the exception of the freight trains that passed a few hundred meters away from me and the quiet hum of trucks making their way across the prairies, it was a quiet night. I woke up just as the sun started to show light in the east. I lay there, trying to find a soft spot of dirt to rest my hips when I thought I heard the first drops of rain. I did not want to pack up in a downpour so I quickly got up, got dressed and start to roll up my sleeping bag and bivy sack. Only then did I realize that it was not rain that I heard but the gentle flapping of the nylon flags above me. The wind was coming back.

It was still only barely morning when I sat down, all packed and ready to go but it was still too dark to stand on the road. I felt a lot more relaxed than I had the day before as I had called a friend and got her to cancel my appearance at the farmer's market for the Saturday. I was pretty sure that I could be back in time but the sense that I might not was always in the back of my mind. Hitchhiking is not fun if one is in a rush.

There was not a lot of traffic on the road at 6:00 in the morning but I had nothing else to do so I went down to the highway. There were a few trucks parked behind the gas station and I was mildly optimistic that one of those trucks would give me a ride to somewhere. And one did. It was a grain truck and he was just going to Swift Current but at least it would be near a major population centre. My driver said that he would let me off at a truck stop. Perfect! A bathroom and perhaps some breakfast. - things were looking up.

It is only about 60 kilometres from Morse to Swift Current and so we did not have a lot of time to talk. My driver was from the old school of driving where he took a six week course ( three weeks in class and three weeks driving practice) before he got his license and then on his first job was paired with a more experience driver for two weeks before he was let out on his own. My driver talked about the truck driver in the Humboldt bus accident and the fact that he was an immigrant from Pakistan (he used cruder words than that to describe him). He was sure that he had had, at best, only a few days training, that he had been allowed to cheat on his written test and that a more experienced driver had not been paired with him once he got his license. He was reasonably sure that the driver, because of his poor English skills was not paying attention to the road as he tried to determine what both his maps and the road signs said.

As I have a number of times before, I had a discussion about immigrant drivers. While I agreed that the newer drivers are poorly trained and may lack of the necessary skills and training to be the best drivers, I argued that the fault does not lie with them as much as it does with the owners of the companies. Those companies who hire drivers who they know have received inadequate training, employers who do nothing to ensure that those drivers get the needed training, and those employers who pay poorly and in fact prey upon the immigrants. My driver did not disagree with me but yet still resented the immigrant drivers who were taking lower wages (and therefore lowering the rates for all drivers) and I suspect resented those new drivers for lowering the public's general impression of all truck drivers.

It is a debate that I will never win. The truck drivers who pick me up are good people. Men who work hard doing a job that they think is important. They are frustrated with the lack of regulations at to training or support for new truckers. They see themselves as being under-valued members of their community who are underpaid. They, like any other profession, get angry when they see their position being diminished. They get angry at the people they can see, not the owners hiding in the corporate offices.

Interestingly - as my driver was complaining about people not following the rules, he told me that his truck was significantly over-weight and that if he got caught he would be fined thousands of dollars. He was not worried as he knew how to get around the scales. A friend of mine later told me that these big trucks are causing a lot of damage on the secondary roads of the province as they are hauling far heavier loads than the roads were designed for.

MY driver let me out on the west end of Swift Current. It was a small truck stop with not a lot of traffic. The wind was back in full force.