The Express Experience 1978-79

As I arrived for work the following Sunday afternoon I was unaware that I was joining forces with the most varied characters I had yet to meet.

I found my time card among what looked like hundreds in the slots next to the punch clock and punched in as I'd been shown along with the 16 others  including 5 new hires like myself on their first shift.

I met the foreman, Don "Vinnie the vulture" Denton who was a tall, grey-haired fellow with a mustache who squinted through the smoke of the ever present cigarette he always had clenched between his teeth.

I was to learn his nickname was a result of his appearance to Vincent Price and habit of hovering over  workers he suspected of "Dog fucking".
(After a few months on the job Don came to trust me and often singled me out for challenging jobs and began calling me by my first name. )

I was put  on the unloading crew inside a large boxcar docked on the long covered pier-like platform that ran along about 100 feet of rail line at the east end of the warehouse.

At this time most of the freight consisted of small shipments of boxes, crates and assorted items that had to be unloaded by hand (hand bombed) by the workers onto a telescoping set of rollers that were
extended into the unit being unloaded which might be a boxcar ,shipping container or semi trailer.
When a large item was "unearthed" we pushed the rollers out and called for a forklift.

A self-important warehouseman with seniority would then blunder in and remove the piece and we would continue.

Other experienced guys (Grade III ware housemen) known as "checkers"were stationed at the end of the conveyor where it met the main rollers that went in an oval around the centre of the warehouse.

This fellow stood at a portable podium-like desk and routed the freight as it emerged, scrawling a number onto each piece with a lumber crayon.

The piece would then move down the conveyor where other senior workers stood in six spots and removed pieces to place them in numbered areas marked out on the floor.

These were the routes for delivery and numbered 1 to 13, Surrey, Langley, North and West Van,Burnaby 1,2 ,3 and 4 and various freight carriers who delivered to areas not covered by C.N.

The larger shipments were lined up elsewhere in the building to be delivered by one of the dozen tractor trailers, or by "Specials" in a regular freight truck. (I was a grade II warehouse/motorman which was C.N.'s traditional name for truck drivers and handled the specials when required).

The smaller shipments were placed on flat decked carts called "flats"of which there were dozens and pulled around to the various delivery trucks' doors awaiting loading by the drivers in the morning.

If the driver had too much freight it was "specialed" and myself or one of the other guys with my grade were sent out with it.

I was unaware what a good arrangement we had as we received an hour paid lunch and were allowed to run down for coffee or pop whenever we wanted and have it alongside our work area.
My rate of pay at the start was around $6.50 an hour with 25 cents shift bonus for working afternoon/evenings.
I completed my shift that day and was scheduled Monday to Thursday 7:45 a.m.-3:45p.m. and the Sunday 2-10 p.m. shift.

 Showing up for Monday day shift I was met by a chaotic scene of forklifts rushing around as the graveyard shift finished routing the unloaded freight to the delivery areas prior to the drivers coming on shift at 8 and 8:30.

The day shift was well under way when the drivers began organizing their deliveries and called for assistance to help with heavy freight and pallets.

There were about seven ware housemen,a shipper/receiver  and Don Denton , the foreman.

The full time warehousemen were the older, senior guys, many of them Italians who swore at each other playfully throughout the day.

Ernie "sexy" Pearson was the Cooper (an archaic term for a barrel maker, but at CN this signified a fellow who repaired damaged shipping crates etc.)

Ernie was housed within a chain link compound surrounded by large broken wooden crates, lumber known as dunnage and various equipment used in his repairs. He was usually seated behind an old, dusty office desk covered in birdseed(Like the Bird Man of Alcatraz, Ernie fed the many resident sparrows in the warehouse) waiting for something to do. He was a tiny,balding man, dressed in bib overalls and was very pleasant to talk to. Me being a new guy was ignored by most of the older fellows for the first while, so Ernie's friendliness was appreciated.

Ernie "the lobster" Pounder was the receiver and also a senior man. He was a large bespectacled fellow with florid complexion (explaining his nickname) with a loud voice usually joking around and berating management to their faces without repercussion.

He stood behind one of the portable desks awaiting shipments that appeared sporadically through the shift and had a very leisurely work load most of the time.

He often sat in the lunchroom in the basement for long periods until summoned over the intercom "Receiver to door 12!"

Bob Carphin was the value clerk and leaned across a steel half door within a secure area where valuable shipments were kept safe prior to shipment.

These included small cardboard boxes about 6" square containing cremated human remains. They were placed within a locked cage on wheels that was loaded into the trailers and documented fully as a result of one being lost in the past before my time.

Bob was an older morose type who was never without his ball cap and didn't socialize with the others on shift. He had the slackest of all of the warehouse positions.

There were also several people in the dispatch office commanded by "Alki" Bill Rogowski, the Air Canada Express office, the claims office and the main operations office upstairs where the general manager Gerry Kirby presided.

Shortly before 9 a.m the overtime crew began arriving. they were afternoon shift workers who were invited to the copious extra work available to try and deal with the volume of freight.
The drivers had all gone by then and we turned our attention to unloading the inbound units alongside the over timers.

There were about 15 to 20 guys in attendance and it took me some time to know them all, but as I remember it most were very good humoured and easy to work with.

The guys worked as teams of about three in each trailer,container or boxcar  with a checker at the end as previously described,the fellows surrounding the roller conveyor removing boxes and others doing forklift work or outside securing large loads on flat deck rail cars.

After a few shifts Don motioned to me using his cigarette to signal me by tossing his head back and through the smoke cloud I was able to discern he wanted me to follow him outside onto the platform where one of the senior fellows Nick "Desperdado" Dispirito was standing on one of the flat cars dwarfed by large pieces of machinery he had loaded from a flat deck trailer onto the rail car.

Don told me to work with Nick who was the only guy authorized to secure these challenging loads.

Nick was a very easy going and comical fellow to work with and patiently trained me as his new helper.

We spent several hours blocking the machinery and chaining it into place. There was never any rush from foremen to get it done.... they wanted it right.
Armed with sledge hammers, chains, spikes and chainsaw to cut lumber for bracing we toiled outside in all weather conditions, but had hardhats and rain coats provided.

Once Nick was satisfied he sent me to inform Don who then called over to the office for an inspector to be sent to sign-off on the load and call a yard locomotive to haul it out to the nearby marshaling yard.
(If no locomotives were free we often pushed the cars with the big Toyota forklift used outside to the end of the spur line where it was out of our way and could be retrieved at the engineer's leisure).

Some of the guys were sent out with the tractor trailer operators (TTOs) to help load or unload large shipments including coins from the Mint in Winnipeg.

I was sent out "swamping"one morning along with Carmen "Baby face" Zenone and Brent Kendricks as driver with a CN Police car escorting us and the $4,000.000.00 load of coin bound for Loomis Armoured Car's facility downtown.
The coins weighed 35 tons and were in cloth bags stacked about 2 high covering most of the trailer's floor.

While a Loomis guard and CN officer watched with cradled 12 gauge shotguns (The long tractor trailer unit precluded closing the facility's security gates and therefore extra vigilance was needed)we loaded the bags onto pallets that were removed by another armed guard on forklift and counted as we went along. It took about 2 hours and was a tiring job as we were bent over the whole time. Some bags leaked coins and many were caught in the floor ribs and had to be fished out.
Once finished we were treated to lunch by Alki Bill the fleet supervisor who had come along to check up on our progress.

After a few weeks one morning Bob Bayne appeared with a rough looking character who he informed me was the driver tester and was taking me out to qualify for motorman status.

Bob Speldesy (Smelldissy) acted with great authority as he asked to see my license and like a cop made me "Take it out of the wallet". We took out one of the older Ford F-600 P&D (pickup and delivery) units and I drove around the area on a circuitous route taking us back to the warehouse where I was asked to back into a loading door and handed my card identifying me as qualified to drive CN equipment.

Later that morning Bob approached with a short,powerfully built white-haired gent with broken nose and scarred face named Ed Thom.

Ed was a former boxer and nearing retirement as a driver was working in dispatch.
Bob sent him with me to cover some specials and help me with the paper work and other duties.

Ed was another very nice guy and told me to take my time as we spent a pleasant day covering many miles in heavy Friday traffic in an old Ford cab over.

I was familiarized with the procedures of turning in my waybills and cash from collect freight shipments to the dispatch clerks who stood at two glassed in ticket windows where the drivers lined up and waited to finish up for the day.

Afternoon shift warehousemen helped the drivers unload so they could get to the bar for a beer.

After about two months on the job things slowed down and I was informed one day along with several others that we were being laid-off.
Once more things were uncertain.