The Guys Behind the Wheel was first published in West magazine. It was subsequently re-published in highwaySTAR and Today’s Trucking magazines.
The Guys Behind the Wheel
By Lori Henry
Flashback to the day Hudson’s Hope became Lynch’s Hope.
It was 47 below and trucker Norm Lynch was hauling a giant crane along Highway 29 when he came to the suspension bridge across the Peace River.
Lynch took one look, sighed, and hoped he’d get his high, wide and heavy load across. He inched forward, hardly daring to breathe for 12,912 long, slow inches. A surveyor later told him the two-lane concrete bridge sagged seven inches during the crossing.
West Magazine: The Guys Behind the Wheel, Page 1
That’s the kind of story you hear, often, from the retired truckers and mechanics who run the Teamsters Freight Transportation Museum and Archives in Port Coquitlam, BC.
They enjoy reminiscing about the good old days of trucking in Western Canada, but what they really do here is restore and display old trucks, like the bodyless 1935 Diamond T that just came in.
My grandfather, Gord Henry, a long haul truck driver for 52 years, mentioned this museum to me three years ago – it opened in 1997 – and it took me that long to finally get there. I was immediately won over by this community of men still as passionate about trucks as they were in their heydays.
Most of the guys who hauled freight over the West’s perilous back roads and shoddy highways in the old days knew each other, but staying in touch was impossible before cell phones and computers.
Now they have this terrific museum where they can shoot the breeze all they want.
With Norm Lynch as president and curator, the members painstakingly restore vehicles from as far back as 1914. Standing between a 1935 red Chevrolet Maple Leaf and 1929 Shell White Tanker, Norm talks about the time he was stuck in a whiteout coming back from Faro, Yukon, with only a CB radio and another driver reporting he was completely lost. (He later turned up safe and sound.) Paddy O’Brien recalls his yearlong stretch of waking up at 5:00 a.m. to make the first of two daily trips to Victoria, getting home at 1:00 a.m., and loading up to do it again the next morning.
Conversations here mostly start with “Remember when…” and end with laughter and heads nodding in understanding.
The idea of the museum grew out of a request to find an old truck.
West Magazine: The Guys Behind the Wheel, Page 2
In 1996, Garnet Zimmerman, then president of Teamsters’ Local 31, asked Norm to find a 1936 truck to commemorate the Local’s 60th anniversary. Norm immediately thought of the late Aubrey “Bob” King’s collection of vintage trucks, which were wasting away in warehouses throughout BC’s Lower Mainland.
King, a trucking magnate, owned most of the trucks on the road in the early 1900s. His dispute with the teamsters union in 1958 over a proposed two cents an hour raise led him to shut down his businesses and seal up the trucks. After his death, the collection was given to the government and housed in Chilliwack. Norm negotiated a deal with them to take the trucks for two years and start restoring them. If the government was happy with the work, he could keep them for $1.00. Norm still owes the government that loonie.
He and the guys continue to find old trucks and fix them up with the financial backing of the union. About 10 volunteers arrive every Thursday at 7:00 a.m. to drink coffee and catch up. Work starts at 9:00. When I walk in at 9:30, their hands are already dirty and they’re grinning from ear to ear.
“Some of the humour that goes on in here is classic, brilliant,” says head mechanic Bob Nairn. “Nobody is immune, not even Norm,” he jokes as Norm walks by.
But the work is serious. Some of the trucks are old friends. When the vehicles won’t start, they will figure out how to coax them into life; when the trucks are shown in parades or featured in movies, they act like proud fathers.
And so the day continues. Past co-workers stop by, as do occasional visitors with stories of their own lives on the road. Groups of kids are greeted with pleasure.
This working museum is a hub for the old truckers to stay connected. Along the walls are photos of some of the old drivers. The whole place is a living history of trucking in Western Canada.
SIDEBAR
Teamsters Freight Transportation Museum and Archives
Open: Thursdays, 7:30 to 2:30
Call for alternate times; the hours are flexible
Admission: By donation
Address: 1580 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC
Phone: (604) 472-1647
Copyright 2009 Lori Henry
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