Sitting Idle

Well here it is almost the middle of August and I’m sitting idle waiting for my mechanic to finish working on my truck.  Nothing serious just routine maintenance but he is a popular mechanic so I have to share his day with other clients which means he’ll get to me later on towards supper time.  Same thing happened yesterday.  It gets a little frustrating but his rates and expertise are worth it considering how much money I have paid to Peterbilt over the last five years and received poor treatment last year so I decided to look around for  a better place to go.  This is the same mechanic who did the in-frame for my truck so I decided to overlook his somewhat slow way of working on things.

Hauled some magnesium chloride up to a place called “Likely” in the western Caribou region about 1.5 hours from 150 Mile House.  The pit was next to a nice little lake (see photos) named what else “Little Lake”.  Some nice cabins around the lake and it wasn’t so little by my standards.

Lately I’ve been hauling emulsion up to a place called “Iskut” in northern BC about 73 km south of Dease Lake.  The first time there was a pain as the tank to offload into wasn’t where it was supposed to be.  One of our company drivers had to drop his trailers and hook onto the tank to move it about 4 km down the road.  When pulling out of the pit it was located in he didn’t make a wide enough turn (see photos) and drove the back axles into the ditch.  We had to call a tow truck to pull him over to allow him to drive out.  Then when he got the tank set up at the other pit he backed into them and bent his front bumper out about 90 degrees.  To top it all off the product was cold on his trailers as he was the first truck loaded so it took over 6.5 hours for me to get started.  Once I pumped off the pup and part of the lead, I had to pump the rest into a trailer at the back.  I climbed up to open the lid so the pump wouldn’t have to work so hard and discovered that there was diesel in the trailer.  We had to pump that out before adding the emulsion so all told I was there 9.5 hours when I should have only been there 2.

Little Lake BC

Little Lake in the western caribou region of BC

gravel pit near little lake bc

sunset near Kitwanga BC

Twilight on highway 37

Iskut Pit misshap

Iskut Pit misshap

Iskut Pit misshap

One Response to “Sitting Idle”

  1. angie Says:

    Your job is really a mixture of Beauty and extreme frustration. It’s so wonderful you can focus on the beauty and all the interesting little places along your travels Paul. Thanks for them It’s like a little bit of travel for me I really enjoy the great pictures! B.C. is a gorgeous place!

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