Your Guess

At the Fairview Cove terminal today, a Niavistar International from Total Transport and Rigging hauled a camo'd Freighliner with its body concealed by blue shrink wrap.

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what is under the blue skin.

.

Bright and shiny

It seems that local refuse haulers are upgrading their fleets as some bright and shiny new units have been spotted recently.


Miller Group has a base in Enfield, NS where this unit was spotted late last month.

 Mack with McNeilus front loader was making a coffee stop which gave me time to grab a photo. The lifting arms are full retracted.

On the Halifax peninsula, REGroup had this one emptying bins along the Halifax waterfront.
 

By the time I got turned around to catch this one, it was speeding off to its next stop, with the lifting arms partially retracted. The low cab forward Pete, with cab quarter windows, also carries a front loading McNielus packer body.

 

McNeilus seems to have cornered the market for packers around here. The company, founded in 1970, also makes transit mixers. It has been part of the Oshkosh Corp since 1997, along with London which was acquired in 2006.

I posted this one earlier in the month, but it was such an impressive rig I decided to post it again just to complete the trio of the most prominent refuse haulers in the area. GFL Environmental (Green For Life) has the brightest trucks.

 Another Pete with McNeilus packer, this one a twin steer, still manages to get around some very tight spots in downtown. It may not be as new as the other two, but is still pretty clean.

.

Front Yard Seat

A new water line going in has brought a lot of truck traffic to my otherwise quiet dead end street. I normally see the odd delivery van, oil truck and the weekly garbage trucks, but otherwise truck activity is rare.

There certainly has been a variety this week, both trucks and a crawler backhoe, a digger, a vibratory roller, and a skid steer.

A big Navistar International HX twin steer had a small load of crushed stone.

 A GMC arrived with a load of gravel.

2007 Freightliner showed up to load broken up asphalt and excavated material.

Rare Cat with DEL dumper was also in the mix.

A small Peterbilt tilt deck arrived to haul away the trench frame.


.

Class A RVs

The big Class A motor homes and RVs cover a wide range of types and sizes. Some are motor coaches converted or purpose built, others are RVs with completely purpose built "coachwork". Class Bs on the other hand have at least a commericial chassis and cab, with some sort of add on or faired-in body.

Two recent European callers I have seen are small Class As. They have have no obviously identifiable commercial truck or van component, but do carry the badge of the chassis manufacturer.

A week or two ago I spotted this spendid PhoneiX-Liner Reisemobile. PhoeniX makes a range of RVs in Germany, and use the MAN and Iveco chassis.

This one is quite new, and was planning on staying awhile, since it had deployed its leveller legs. It is wearing Swiss plates from the Canton of Lucerne.

More recently a "less than new" RV showed up wearing a confusing array of badges.

Centered in the grille is "Florium", and on the bar below, "Wincester".  High over the windshield was "Fleurette". It was not until looking near the driver's door (an unusual feature on a Class A) that I found "Ducato Maxi" - revealing at least a Fiat undercarriage.

 CarryIng French plates, this one hails from Département 83, Var (Toulon, Préfecture). Since 2009 the new French plates stay with the vehicle for life, and you are apparently free to put whatever region you want on the plate, since it is not part of the alpha-numeric registration.

Petes and Macks

The Peterbilt low cab forward is a common site on Halifax streets as a refuse packer. But Green For Life operates some Petes (at least two) that are a bit unusual, with a single drive axle, single steer and flat deck. One is a stake side and the other has a hydraulic crane for lifting dumpsters off and on.

I noticed particularly the unusual door on the shotgun side - I assume the flap folds up to allow a better view of the curb and gutter. It also opens to 90 degrees as I noticed some time ago.

The stake side unit seems to be dedicated to picking up small recycling bins from apartment buildings. It has no crane, but maybe a hydraulic tailgate, and the same door arrangement on the driver's side.

Constant concrete deliveries are going on in Halifax as the building boom continues, and one of the suppliers, Quality Concrete has a shiny new Mack in its fleet. It was offloading today downtown.

I wonder if it is fact the same truck I saw at the Simard factory in August- you decide.

.

Big Trucks- Light Loads

A couple of sizable trucks arrived today [October 1] with B-Train loads of roofing insulation for a downtown construction project. The material  was craned off the trucks directly to the roof using a very new looking super boom truck.

First truck in line to unload was this 2014 International RH series, well equipped to meet a moose head on.

The next in line was a shiny black 2016 Kenworth, with an even more robust moose bar.

Both trucks are operated by Transportation Philippe Day Inc of Nouvelle, QC. An interesting company, involved in all forms of heavy transport, but more likely to operate Western Stars.

The unloading was done by this nifty Western Star with a National NBT 45-1 crane. Even though it was an eight story lift, there was lots of extension left over, with a tip height of 206 feet.

It was a tight squeeze on the narrow street, but this big twin steer Pete packer managed to get around with a little direction from the construction workers.

.

Volvo FE

As mentioned last week when I saw a Volvo FL rigged as an RV, Volvo produced the FE tilt cab for North America. They were popular for fire apparatus for a time, (in fact I don't think they sold too many non-fire units!).  Custom  manufacturers, like Spartan could provide a fully tilting crew cab, but Volvo and the other commercial manufacturers never did, and soon withdrew from the fire apparatus line, and from the COE and low cab forward market completely.

Trenton, Nova Scotia ran this 1993 Volvo FE42 chassis with Anderson 1050 /1000 pumper as engine 19-01. It was sold in 2017 to Gore District. 2011 photo.

An unusual service, called Clean Heroes, offers a mobile bunker gear cleaning and sanitizing service out of Stewiacke, NS.

They run this Volvo FE with Metalfab walk in rescue body modified for their use. It has an independent crew cab. September 25, 2018 photo.

The Canadian government in one form or another had a number of Volvos on their rosters, especially the Department of Transport, which provided fire fighting at many airports.

The Almonte salesmen weren't trying too hard to sell this rig, since it had already been bought and paid for by the taxpayers. 1994 photo.

Halifax Airport had this unit, also built by Almonte, on duty in 1996. There are some slight differences with the unit above, but it is essentially the same spec, with the high reach Snozzle foam monitor. Snozzle is a Pierce trade mark.

.

Seeing Red - Part 1 - Chev and GMC

Back when General Motors built a steel tilt cab (1960 to 1981) they marketed Chevrolet and GMC versions that were virtually identical, with only one slight revisions in trim over the years. Sometimes called the L series it had a 72 inch BBC measurement. Never as popular as its direct competitor the Ford C series, or even the later International, it did see many sales to fire departments until closed crew cabs became the norm.

I spotted one survivor of the series today:

Now in the hands of a collector and possible restorer, this Chev ended its working career with a hog farmer in Canning, NS, but is likely a veteran of some Annapolis Valley fire department. The steel cab appears to have survived well. It is the only one I have seen recently, but back in the 1980s and 1990s I saw plenty:

Most of the trucks I saw of this type were straight trucks, but Seagrave built this tractor perhaps in 1965 to tow a 1952 Seagrave tiller steer trailer. Note the "tilt cab" on the trailer - it tilts sideways to access the aerial ladder. Hanover Fire Department, Newark, Ohio ran this rig.

Hantsport, NS had this GMC / Thibault on their roster in 1983.

Annapolis Royal, NS ran a GMC / Pierreville pumper/tanker in 1985.

Chester Basin VFD had a GMC / King-Segrave version in 1987.

 Chatham, NB had a pair of these tilt cabs in 1985, one a GMC/ Thibault running as engine 1,

and the other a GMC / Pierreville as engine 5.

Not all red trucks were fire trucks. Esso Petroleum Canada operated this 1970 GMC refueler at the Halifax airport for many years.

Kelly's Towing from Grand Pré, NS operated a Chev in 1986. The elaborate pinstriping hints at a fire department history for this truck. The theme was repeated on the tow body, which appears to have been the survivor of a previous truck.

Of course not all fire apparatus is red.

 Les Eboulements, QC still had this lime Chev / Pierreville in service in 1996. [see their current pumper tanker in my September 8, 2018 post].

Nowadays when every other truck is painted factory white, a white truck doesn't stand out, but at one time there were several departments that ran white apparatus.

 In 1997 Dickinson, NY VFD had this handsome GMC on their roster. Note that it is a high mount cab (maybe to accommodate a diesel engine?), with canopy extension. The centre console pumper tanker is by Thibault (yes they exported to the US and overseas too) and dates from 1970.

 That arrangement necessitated a longer than normal wheelbase.

I posted more photos of these Chev GMC tilt cabs back in 2010 see: http://truckfax.blogspot.com/2010/03/chev-gmc-tilt-cab.html


To be continued.........

.

RVs on the way out

The hoards of European RVs are heading back home after their North American odysseys. A few linger for a day or two before shipping out, but most go directly into the terminals and I don't see them.


One particularly aged Volvo from France did hang about for a time earlier this month:
 

The FL6, Volvo's smallest truck, was produced between 1985 and 1997 in Europe, and a similar version called the FE6 was sold in North America for time, using the same cab, but with different engine specs.
FL stands for Forward cab Low level cab.

This one also has a very low level box body, with unusual skirting all round. The hydraulic ramp is likely intended to carry bicycles, and in fact the unit may only be a mobile bike repair shop and not an RV at all.

With the offshore RVs going there are still tons of domestic RVs on the road, but mostly the usual suspects, built on North American chassis. A few oddities do pop up however:

 The Toyota Townace van was available with a fibreglass RV body and pop top, built by A'm craft Co Ltd. Marketed as "European" and in RHD version only, the 4WD rig is still popular if the sales ads are any indication. There is also a busy market for imports from Japan.

This one, bearing British Columbia plates, is in "original" condition - at least on the  outside.

Another Japanese van (in original condition), with a high top on a standard van body, is this Mitsubishi Delica, with Utah plates.

Also a 4WD its is called a "Chamonix" model, built especially for skiers.

Just in case they decided to convert to water skiing, there is a breather extension mounted above the water line.

That may be a solar panel on the top - a recent add on.

.

Straight trucks with sleepers

There are few straight trucks with sleepers on the road - at least in this part of the world, so when I see one I grab a photo.

This F-liner shows up on the waterfront from time to time with supplies for cruise ships. Clipper Ship Supply is based in Montreal and obviously includes perishables amongst the products it will supply to ships.

Once likely a hot shot type delivery truck, this Inter has taken on a second life as a pumper. Its job appears to be pumping out restaurant grease traps. A fairly unpleasant job, and no doubt the sleeper has been converted for other uses. The long wheelbase and short body gives a distinctive appearance.

A giant high rise aerodynamic sleeper hardly seems necessary for a guard rail post digger, but here it is. The Pete must have had an over the road career to start, but that big box probably serves a a crew cab. If the digger body is readily de-mountable, the truck could hit the road again if needed.

.