Early Work

The Truckfax blog was established as a way to share my truck photos both past and present. In recent months I have not been taking pictures of trucks very often and even then they were of no particular interest or distinction. Weather of course was a factor - getting about in winter is less and less enjoyable.

While I have not exhausted my collection of past photos by any means, I seem to have shown the most interesting and the best.

Therefore - although this is a little late to announce it - Truckfax will be taking a break over the summer months too. This will allow a little time to accumulate some new material and perhaps work on some of the old photos to make them presentable.

The photo featured here is the first truck photo I ever took.

I do apologize for the quality, but there were extenuating circumstances. The 1957 Dodge pulling in on the right made me click a tad earlier than planned (and the truck was moving). That is my grandmother's 1957 Plymouth wagon on the left which was between me and the shot I really wanted. The camera was one of those ones you had to look down into to aim, so that is why the eye level is so low, and why I couldn't shoot over the car.

However it is the truck that was important. Single drive axle semis with tarp top, stake side, two axle trailers were pretty standard in those days. The C series Ford tilt cabs were still a bit of a novelyy since they had only been in production since 1957.
But it was the integral sleeper that was the real object of the photo. I am not sure that this was a factory option back then, but it was very rare. Certainly the first one I ever saw.  A similar, but windowless (and possibly plastic) sleeper of similar dimensions shows up in brochures in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The photo was taken on (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend while on a shopping trip to Buffalo, NY (stores there were open on the Monday), so it is a US truck. I believe the date is 1958 - both from memory and from the model year of the cars. (It's a 1958 Chevrolet in the background). Who would have suspected in 1958 that C-series tilt cabs would remain in production until 1990?

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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.

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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.

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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.


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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.

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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.

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