Road Trip Report 5 - Western Stars

Western Stars seem to leap before my camera in many places as I make my rounds.

Long wheelbase wrecker works out of Yamachiche, QC, serving routes 138 and 20.

Also a wrecker, but an unusual single drive axle unit, this 'Star, with classic Autocar cab, serves the Miscou Island area of New Brunswick.

Clearing the way for the wrecker during Miscou's notorious winters, this aged White Western Star sports a pair of shop made checkerplate fenders.

Langille Brothers Contracting Ltd of New Glasgow, NS run this big Western Star with a custom billet grille.

This Shriner parade vehicle owes some of its inspiration to Western Star - at least for the hood, but the cab looks more like a Freightliner. Its sponsor is Hodgson Trucking, a real trucking company working from the Eastern Passage area of Halifax hauling tankers, containers and doing other general trucking.

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Road Trip Report 4 - no fire here

There was a public event underway in the Pictou fire hall on June 20 so the apparatus had been wheeled out onto to the apron. Despite long shadows from the late evening sun, the unique "biscuit" over over red colour scheme was still vidible.

Unit No.1 is this good looking Ford F-350 light rescue.

 Big Sterling Acterra from Metalfab is Truck 7....

Its ULC plate indicates an October 12, 2007 certification at 1050 igpm.

Classy American LaFrance Eagle is called "Number 6"....

Its plate is dated June 8, 2000 and it also rates at 1050 igpm.


I have featured some of the previous apparatus from the Pictou VFD here before:

http://truckfax.blogspot.ca/2011/10/dodges-and-fargos-long-gone-from-big.html
http://truckfax.blogspot.ca/2014/03/american-lafrance-down-for-third-time.html

Where's the fire

A recent trip through Pierreville St-François-du-Lac QC, showed up a few interesting pieces of E-One apparatus at the Techno-Feu dealer. Despite heavy rain I was able to click away at a few of them.

 Single axle Freightliner for the town of Repentigny  next to a Montreal aerial.:

http://ville.repentigny.qc.ca/vie-citoyenne/incendies/la-flotte.html

Larger tandem pumper tanker on a 2008 Freightliner chassis from nearby Varennes is in for service:

http://ville.varennes.qc.ca/citoyens-incendie/incendie_vehicules

 

Unmarked airport unit is not new - look at the rusty rims.

This aerial is assigned to the Institut de protection contre les incendies de Quebec, the firefighter training school in Laval.

http://www2.cslaval.qc.ca/ipiq/ 

Another aerial from the school, this one a Bronto Skylift.

 

Some handsome black over red aerials from Montreal. The number 473 indicates that it is a ladder (4) and that it is assigned to station 73 (rue St-Germain, St-Laurent). This is a 135 ft rearmount dating from 1993 according the Wiki: http://fire.wikia.com/wiki/Service_de_S%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_Incendie_Montr%C3%A9al

 

Ville de Mont-Laurier operates this platform aerial.

http://www.villemontlaurier.qc.ca/services-municipaux/securite-publique/services-des-incendies.html

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Time marches on

A couple of Freightliners gave Halifax a blast from the past today:

The 2006 Freightliner carries a Jardine Transport sign on its door, but its black and orange colour scheme indicate that  it is a former Day and Ross rig. D+R used to market them selves as "The Big Orange", but they have lost that name and no longer bother to paint their trucks in anything but factory "refrigerator" white.
Jardine on the other hand, a small but significant operator from Fredericton, NB since 1978, may soon be sprouting new colours. The company has just been sold to Seafort Capital of Halifax and might be expected to become more visible in the flatbed and drop deck market.
http://jardinetransport.ca/
http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1512759/seafort-capital-announces-acquisition-of-jardine-transport

Jardine may move to fill some of the gap left by the unfortunate failure of Ken Giberson Transport Ltd of Miramichi, NB. The company, founded in 1967, went into receivership in February and its fleet of trucks and trailers was sold to Maynard Industries and offered for sale at auction June16.

Giberson trucks were always painted a distinctive blue with neat white lettering. At the end the fleet consisted of about twenty 2012 International ProStars, all with about 500,000 kms on them, and
 

several cannibalized veterans of previous years, mostly Freightliners, but some Kenworths. The auction ad called them "salvage units". There were also 30 dry vans, 50 container chassis and some flat decks on sale at the auction. (Above photos taken June 20, so some of the trucks may already have been driven away.)


Another Freightliner was a blast from the past today as it stood by at the Petro-Canada Petro-Pass cardlock in Burnside:

A vintage Freightliner COE with high rise sleeper and drom box. COEs and droms, once a common sight, are now fairly rare birds, but are making a comeback.

This one has been extensively rebuilt/customized with a lot of lighting, chrome trim, and even modern mirrors installed on reinforced door panels. It operates for Nahorniak Service Inc of Saskatoon, SK.

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Road Trip Report- 2, Autocars

Autocars used to rule the road for heavy trucks, but were long ago gobbled up by GMC/Volvo. My fondness for this mark has been recounted here countless times, so it should come as no surprise that I screach to a halt whenever I see one.
I used to disapprove of the late model GMC/Volvo ones, but I have mellowed since they seem to be only ones left. And I did spot several of them in northern New Brunswick on my recent road trip.Most appearted to be at least seasonally operational.

 Lurking behind a Scot(!) this A'car still looks pretty good.

Probably a former New Brunswick DoH plow, this one appears to be serviceable.

Another view of the first one shown.

Hooray - an operational A'car and a twin steer to boot.

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Peugeot Partner

Halifax is the transshipment port for new automobiles headed for the French islands of St-Pierre et Miquelon, off the south coast of Newfoundland. The new vehicles arrive in Halifax directly from France on ships of the Atlantic Container line. They are then transferred from the Fairview Cove container terminal to the Halterm container terminal and loaded aboard a smaller ship for St-Pierre et Miquelon.
Since the vehicles are not licensed to travel in Canada, they are transported overload on flat decks or towed.
St-Pierre et Miquelon is actually part of France, even though the islands are in North America, so the vehicles are built to European standards.
Therefore we are likely to see cars and light trucks in Halifax that are never seen anywhere else in North America.
Such was the case today when about a dozen Peugeot  Partners passed through Halifax.

Added Touch Towing got the job to transport the mini-vans using a tilt deck with towing bar to take three at a time. A smaller tilt deck was also used to take two at a time.

A new Irving Oil truck sits in the background (it is probably headed for Newfoundland) as the Peugeots are unloaded. The Partners appeared to be in two styles, one with and one without side door windows, and two colours, silver or white.

These little vans are as common as can be in France, but Peugeot gave up on the rest of North America years ago, so we will never see them driving on our streets.

For more, see Peugeot's home page for vehicules utilitaires:
http://fr.peugeot.be/vehicules-utilitaires/

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Road Trip Report -1

My recent road trip turned up a lot of interesting vehicles, and so follows a series of reports on what I saw:

At the Navistar International dealer in Hanwell, NB (just outside Fredericton, and the nearest dealer to the Gagetown military base) there were several International 7000s, the standard Canadian military LLC Medium Logistics truck, based on the commercial Work Star.

The usual extended cab 6x6 has been supplemented with a mid-chassis hydraulic crane.

There were also several of these rigs with crew cabs.

They all carry the typically Canadian roof top box and access ladder

Speaking of Internationals, there are still a few of my old favourite Paystar 5000s, to be found:

 This former Quebec highways department Paystar is a classic. It is now mostly a hobby truck as far as I can tell, but it probably still sees winter use and seems to be fitted for carrying firewood.

A more recent version of the Paystar 5000, also a former highways department unit, needs some work before it hits the road next winter.

 

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Road Trip

The Truckfax mobile command unit will be hitting the road June 12 for a ten day trip. It is unlikely that there will be any posts to this blog during that time. Expect some fresh material after that however, since I will be covering Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec.

I will not be traveling in an RV- not even a fancy one like this Vixen 21 TD that I spotted last November 10 in Lunenburg, NS. http://vixenrv.org/tiki-index.php?page=Vixen+21+TD

Instead I will be driving the anonocar Ford Escape:

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Freightliner - Watson again

The Watsons are back again for more Bombardier parts. One Freightliner arrived early this evening, but it is likely that more will arrive over night. Last time they were here this unit was partially blocked from view,. so I will give it a posting all by itself.

W5866 sits alone in the Fairview Cove parking lot awaiting its turn to load tonight.

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Special Spec Kenworth

I am always interested to see trucks that have been built to serve a specific purpose. Sometimes that purpose is not obvious, such as with this KW.

Doing a little research on its owner reveals that Baker Corp is a large multi-national based in the USA, with branches all over, that specializes in pumping and tanks. This truck was apparently built, based on their needs, to haul their portable tanks around to various locations, and is fitted with a winch and various other gear to assist in that work.
I was not aware that they had a branch in Truro, NS, and hour up the road from Halifax.

https://www.bakercorp.com/languageregionselector.aspx

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Sick Setra

Oops - not a good place to die - at a busy intersection, on a truck route, downtown in Halifax, with a load of cruise ship passengers. Fortunately there was another bus not far away to pick up the passengers. It took more than three hours to get the bus going moved.

The battery box was open, but no one in sight when I came by. Looks like it will need a tow.

Later:

Stick out your tongue and say aaaah.

Much later Ruggles Towing's big Peterbilt arrived and had to flat tow the bus for a block until there was a more convenient spot to put it on the hook.

 It might have been on its way, but there was an issue with the right rear drive axles, so a dolly was called in for the final tow.

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RVs - again

The inflow of RVs seems to be lagging a bit, so here a few earlier arrivals not yet posted- the long and the short of it:

Long wheelbase Fiat Ducato Maxi looks like a luxe model, but the builder's name was covered by the bike rack.

Peugeots are rare enough, but a 4X4 is indeed worthy of note. The body appears to have been built by Tikro, with windows supplied by Seitz.

 I couldn't get a front end shot of this VW California. It did appear to have a pop top, but is certainly the smallest European RV I have seen this season.

Another one where I didn't catch the front. It was just leaving a traffic light and before I got my camera out of my pocket it was on its way..

Another high end model on a long chassis.

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