I was moved to the East end of the warehouse to take over loading the Regina and Saskatoon trailers that weren't time sensitive in that they were sent piggyback when they were done.
I worked with Kim Smith who loaded the Calgary trailer across from my area.
Kim was a very easy going fellow a few years older than myself who's father was an engineer in Alberta where Kim was from.
We had a good time helping each other load while talking about every subject under the sun with lots of laughs to go with the stories.
Kim was a drinker and often under the influence while working.
When really impaired he tried to hide it by walking very stiff and upright which tipped us off and we would then tease him to the point that he'd swear at, us slurring badly.
He often offered me a "bracer" which meant a shot of rye in my coffee which I accepted especially when working outside in the rain unloading "china tops". With the canvas curtains pulled back we would unload from the sides.
Freight from the water front warehouses in crates such as Harley Davidson,Yamaha and Honda motorcycles were handled easier this way.
I spent many hours on this job which required great care as the crates were tippy and had to be stacked three high.
The unloading required crossing the rail tracks alongside the platform which added to the instability of the freight on the forks of the big dual-wheeled Toyota we had outside.
Unlike the unit in the photo, ours had no cab for protection. I wore a raincoat and hardhat that kept me pretty dry except my ass from the wet seat!
I was approached by Steve "flycatcher" Watson to become a shop steward.
He was a real activist and along with Greg"Castro" Gigg (due to both his political views and appearance to Fidel through his bushy, black beard).
The two of them never missed any infraction on the part of management and would accost Sully or alki Bill whenever a member was wronged in their view.
My duties included attending meetings on company time a few times each month and keeping our co workers abreast of any issues that concerned them.
I also studied the collective agreement to familiarize myself with the rules and procedures.
Soon after becoming a shop steward I was approached by Sully to join the new safety committee that met once each month on company time.
I kept a list of concerns from my fellow workers and made observations myself as to unsafe equipment and conditions.
As with most committees it was like pulling teeth to get the company to remedy some issues, but I enjoyed chipping away at them.
I was also trained as an air express clerk,value clerk and receiver and filled in on vacation relief in these positions., which also included working at Air Canada Express at the airport which made a nice change.
The great thing about C.N. was the seemingly endless possibilities for jobs to try and career paths available.
Every month a printout the size of a magazine was hung in the dispatch office full of job vacancies throughout our bargaining area that stretched from Victoria to Biggar Saskatchewan (for some reason).
If one had the seniority and qualified they could "bid" on the position and transfer into whichever area it was in.
I was initially a temporary warehouse/motorman until they posted permanent positions I had enough seniority to win.
After I had qualified as a checker I could rise to Grade 3 which paid a bit more.
In the early 80s a mysterious gentleman appeared on the scene and was seen hooking up some electronic devices in the dispatch office as well as in the upstairs billing office.
We were soon informed these were part of the new tracking and way billing system that would finally get some control over the mountains of cargo being routed through our facility.
We called him the "chit man" due to his reference to the waybills that came out in a continuous stream from the printer.
The chits were pulled from the computer when a trailer arrived for unloading.
The drivers' shipping documents were turned in and the billers entered them into the computer and the chits came out again.
I was trained by Martin Dunphy, a very patient fellow who worked as a clerk and later alongside us on the afternoon shift.
Martin trained me as an on-hand clerk.
My job was to receive any shipments a driver hadn't delivered and enter the waybill into the computer to show it was "on-hand" in the warehouse.
After much stress in typing info into the beeping enigmatic machine I finally became proficient with this simple task.
To enlighten the reader as to the procedures prior to the computers coming on scene to say it was utter chaos would be a fair description of the way freight moved around the country.
There were crooked drivers who could route shipments to their own homes and one fellow was running an appliance business from his garage.
The "Rapidex" parcel system had no way of tracking the pieces once they left our warehouse.
At Christmas time it was common place for most of us to bring parcels to send to relatives, affix a Rapidex sticker and toss it into the routed trailer to be delivered free of charge.
Management participated in this practice without compunction.
After lunch break each night I grabbed one of the Rapidex Air vans and headed out on a very pleasant journey that occupied me for a week as I remember.
We had a couple of regular pickups at night that I often attended to.
Barber Ellis was a big paper company that had a regular shipment for Calgary ready most evenings.
There were two Ford L9000 tractors, two Ford Louisville P & D trucks and a GMC single axle tractor also sporting the new logos which we thought were pretty cool, although we liked the traditional red trucks too.
My next training was as a tractor trailer operator.
Big Gordie Crawford was our yard t.t.o who offered to train me on lunch breaks and so I began getting used to the Ford Louisville single axle used as yard tractor. It had a hydraulic fifth wheel lift that saved a lot of time since the driver could back under the trailer,hook up the air lines and lift the unit rather than hand cranking the landing gear each time a move was done.
I looked forward to my driving and soon felt confident in maneuvering through the yard and parking the trailers tightly side by side.
After a few weeks Clint, the C.N. equipment tester came by one afternoon to take me on a road test on the property.
I was then qualified as a t.t.o on C.N. property and could assist Gordie on Friday nights by getting a second truck going to help with all of the trailer moves.
We had a list of the trailer numbers and scouted around the compound and moved them to loading doors and removed and sealed those loaded to haul down to the piggyback ramp at the end of Industrial Ave.
Here we pulled onto the scale and Jack Tang or Ed "the pipe" would glance up from his desk by the window and wave us on once the weight was registered.
Often the trailers were grossly overweight and might be rejected and have to go back to the warehouse to have some cargo removed.
I was well aware of the heavy ones as the tires on the rear of the yard tractor bulged as it lifted the unit.
One driver recalled hauling an old beater trailer from the ramp loaded with heavy ship's anchor chain and as he lowered the trailer the whole load came through the rotten floor!
The piggyback allowed for a 70,000 lb. load while the units bound for highway haulage were limited to around 45,000.
One haywire yard jockey once hooked onto a load of McDonald's pop concentrates packed in plastic jugs. He failed to "tug test" the tractor to ensure it had hooked up correctly and as he drove through the yard the trailer dropped and ruptured many containers. Orange syrup flowed over the area and had to be hosed away.
Another jockey did a similar thing and as he pulled a 26 foot "pup" trailer around a corner it unhooked and tipped onto its side. It was full of stereo equipment and I wondered how many items were damaged.
Sometimes in winter the heated trailers blew up or otherwise caught fire.
They had propane furnaces with open flames encased in a mesh cage to keep the cargo from freezing.
There were two furnaces front and middle and if one went out and the propane kept coming "WHAM MO!" I saw one that looked like a swollen sausage with the trailers sides and roof bulged out.
Another came off the ramp billowing smoke and the Vancouver F.D. came down and stood back as the doors were open and hosed down the charred freight. It was a big, sodden mess fit for the dump afterwards.
A semi-retired long haul unit now used as a city tractor it had many hundreds of thousands of miles on it and had a very tough sounding V8 Detroit diesel with lots of power!
Although the long wheel based trucks weren't as easy to handle when jockeying trailers, it was fun to drive it.
Things were still going strong and in 1983 I was a married man with nothing but positive outlook on the horizon.
I filled in as relief yard t.t.o now as well as my other varied duties.
We had a stronger union local which meant our bargaining for new collective agreements was improving.
In 1985 I was able to buy a nice two-bedroom rancher in North Delta for $68,500.00.
The interest rates on mortgages were around 8% then and it was quite a big monthly payment for us, but Shelagh, my wife also worked full time as an office clerk with the Ministry of Health.
C.N. began downsizing some of its trucking companies and folded Midland Superior in with us.
There was quite an adjustment period as their Teamster members had to work with us until a vote was held as to which union would prevail. The CBRT won and the Midland guys who earned about $5.00 an hour more than us had their wages frozen.
Soon after this C.N. announced they were selling off the trucking division which meant us.
Our new Operations Supervisor Lloyd Pawson (Possum) and others in management thought this would be a good thing and urged us to hang on.
C.N. gave us six months to bid into railway jobs if we wanted to remain with C.N. and a few fellows did that.
Hindsight being 20/20 I should have jumped ship, but the encouraging reports from the bosses hooked me into staying.
In early 1986 we were busy moving freight for Expo '86 being held in Vancouver that May.
Once the exhibition began we had the best seats in the house as we sat up on the roof every night at 10 to see the best fireworks displays imaginable.
I came close to bidding on locomotive maintenance jobs at the Surrey Port Mann rail yard that was closer to my home, but I hung on and the doorway closed.
In the summer we were informed that the Fingold brothers, two millionaire businessmen from Hamilton Ontario had bought our operation for $23,000,000.00 and had high hopes of it being the biggest and best transport company in the country.
We became Transport Route Canada and began the downward spiral into oblivion.
The first sign of trouble was the nationwide dismissal of all sales people which was very mystifying.
Business slowed rapidly and layoffs and bumping began in earnest.
In the fall I was bumped and had to displace another fellow from his driver's position and I became a Burnaby driver for a short time before being bumped yet again.
I had to join the dreaded graveyard shift and felt like a zombie- never well rested as I sorted freight at night for a few months.
Shelagh was now pregnant and due the following April when the axe fell and I was laid-off.
Craig Wisehart (Wiseass) was now Operations Supervisor and he phoned me a few times telling me not to give up and hope for the business' recovery was felt.
Months went by and it was reported that the wylie Fingold brothers had seen an opportunity when they got an estimated $80,000,000.00 worth of downtown real estate throughout Canada for a quarter of its value.
They had intended on running the company into the ground all along.
Now that I knew it was all over I had to begin again.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.