Trucking Down the Alaska Highway

On this Yukon winter night, the distant headlights of an oncoming vehicle pierce the darkness in front of us. But for the occasional moose, those headlights have been the only sign of life along this stretch of the Alaska Highway in almost an hour. That is, except for Tom Randall and his 2004 475 HP Columbia.

It’s 2 a.m. and Tom, 54 years old with dark curly hair and glasses, is driving from Whitehorse, Yukon to Fort Nelson, British Columbia 600 miles to the south. In Fort Nelson, he’ll load up with plywood then switch trailers with another driver. While that driver hauls the plywood to Edmonton, 85 miles further south, Tom will return to Whitehorse with a load of medical supplies, groceries, and tires. Including rest breaks, the roundtrip haul will take him approximately 36 hours to complete.

At this time of year, the outside temperature is not likely to rise above 15 degrees Fahrenheit. For that reason, truck refrigeration is unnecessary. Tom keeps the heat cranked up inside the cab to minimize the risk of ice fog suddenly clouding the windshield and blinding him.

The oncoming headlights reveal the profile of a fellow trucker. The headlights dim and the two trucks pass one another in the Arctic night. Tom grabs the microphone of his VHF radio. Northern truckers prefer the VHF to a CB radio because it has a range of 25 miles, and up here, traffic is minimal. “Northbounder near Toad River,” calls Tom. “Sorry about my lights. Forgot to dim them.”

The response is immediate. “S’alright,” says the man and he sounds sincere. “I forget myself sometimes.”

Nothing more needs to be said, no words of comfort are necessary between two truckers making the lonely run along a frozen and seemingly abandoned landscape. It’s simply another day at the office.

But unlike most offices, Tom’s workday includes a few hours of leisure time at Liard Hot Springs, where the water temperature can climb as high as 126°F. He pulls into an empty parking lot and switches off the headlights. After wrapping himself in a pair of quilt-lined Carhartt coveralls, Tom grabs his swim trunks and a towel. When he emerges from the cab, the outside air temperature is -6°F but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. “The springs are a ritual with me,” he says of Liard Hot Springs. “I usually stop here on the way down and the way back.”

Across the two-lane highway, a boardwalk leads to the springs. As Tom walks along it, the Northern Lights appear overhead. Their greenish glow surges and sways in the darkened sky. Several minutes later, a woman passes Tom from the direction of the hot springs. Though she’s wearing a heavy coat and has a towel wrapped around her head, the woman is trembling from the cold.

The boardwalk winds through a lush forest before ending at the hot springs. Moonlight bounces off the water’s black surface and tendrils of steam rise into the air. With no light pollution, thousands of stars are visible overhead, competing against the Northern Lights for attention.

While submerged up to his neck in the water, icicles form in Tom’s curly black hair. He dips beneath the water’s surface then pops up again minus the icicles. Almost immediately, they form again. “I love this place,” he says.

Tom had one experience in his nearly 40 years of driving truck that he’d never like to repeat. “It was winter, and snowy. The roads were bad. A woman was tailgating me, and I didn’t even know it. The next thing I know a guy in another truck says to me on the radio, ‘I think you’ve got a car stuck underneath the back of you.’ I look in my mirrors, but I don’t see a thing. I say to him, ‘No, that’s not possible.’ Actually, it was. I’d dragged that woman in her car 60 miles before he told me.”

The woman escaped with only a broken ankle from pressing so hard on the brake. She also had laryngitis—from screaming for so long. When Tom visited her in the hospital, the woman’s husband was with her. After a few moments, the man asked Tom to step outside. “I thought, Oh no, here it comes,” said Tom. He led the husband out and after the man closed the door behind them, the husband burst into laughter. He said to Tom, “I told her not to tailgate trucks!”

Tom adds, “I got postcards from her for years after that.” He laughs. “She promised she’d never tailgate again!”

Of course, the accident was no fault of Tom’s. In fact, his driving record is perfect. Pacific Northwest Freight Systems will only hire drivers who have at least five years of accident-free northern trucking experience. The company then pays a yearly safety bonus to drivers who remain accident free. In this way, Pacific Northwest has managed to keep their insurance rates reasonable in an industry notorious for high premiums.

As an added safety measure, Pacific Northwest uses dedicated satellite tracking on most of their trucks. This allows the dispatcher to know where they are at all times, and if necessary, communicate with the drivers using text messaging. Tom likes it because he can let them know if there’s a problem. Recently, he text messaged the dispatcher that he’d be getting back late after his run to a Yukon gold mine. His truck had slid off the road while trying to climb a steep hill to the mine. After Tom put chains on, the truck finally made it to the top.

Tom used to haul roadbed machinery, picking up Cat backhoes and other large machinery that companies had left deep in the bush. He loaded them onto flatbeds by himself, sometimes working on steep mountainsides. Maybe this is why he doesn’t mind driving truck along the Alaska Highway, even when the roads are thick with black ice.

Tom believes it’s certainly easier than driving truck in cities. “The stress—trying to drive, reading the map. I wouldn’t know where to go. Now when you’re talking about driving in winter road conditions, I don’t have a problem with that.” This is not to suggest that Tom is a rogue driver, fearless of jackknifing and other hazards. It’s just that with his years of experience, he knows how to handle himself and his truck.

At one point, a subtle movement indicates that the back end of the truck is beginning that dreaded slide across the icy road. Tom tenses slightly, ready to react if necessary. Then, for whatever reason, the truck straightens out again as if it’s decided that tonight is not the night for jackknifing. Tom says casually, “Did you feel that? She wanted to slide.” After a few moments he adds, “I’ll tend to sit on one side of the seat for hours. Helps me to feel what the tractor is doing. If it starts moving, I’ll tell ya, I can feel it.”

And then what? How do you stop more than 80,000 pounds from going wherever it wants to go? Tom explains, “If I start sliding left, I know the tractor has already jacked and is sliding the other way. So, I give it a little power and steer into the skid.”

Another tip he offers is, “Most people don’t know it, but when they plow the road, a lot of the sand they put down ends up at the edges, along the shoulder. If you feel yourself starting to skid, move toward the shoulder for better traction. It’s against nature for most people, because they don’t want to go off the road, but where the sand is you can sometimes stop the skid.”

Occasional frost heaves across the road cause the truck to jump and rumble. On either side of the black topped Alaska Highway, the bush has been cleared about 50’ out from the shoulder. Snowmobile tracks mark the otherwise pristine snow beside the road. Beyond the clearing, it’s pure wilderness; home to an assortment of wild animals including grizzly bears, wolves, elk, caribou, and moose.

Whenever he stops for brake checks or deliveries, Tom carves out the rear lights from the snow that covers the back of the truck. This covering of snow forms when the tires splash it off the road. In some places, it’s more than three inches thick across the back, and more than twice that thick along the undercarriage.

On the way back from Fort Nelson, Tom slows to avoid a herd of wild bison that have parked themselves beside the Alaska Highway. Two bulls, each the size of a Volkswagen Bug, stand on either side of the road like massive bookends. When threatened, the bulls will sometimes charge a vehicle and the damage they wreak can be catastrophic. With learned patience, Tom squeezes his rig between the bulls then slowly returns to normal speed.

Just another day at the office.