Dale was a trucker through and through. He had watched his father haul thousands of loads of anything and everything all across the continent. He had caught the trucking bug from an early age. Dale wanted to be just like his dad, who we will call Sid. As soon as he’d gotten his regular drivers licence, he begged his father to teach him to drive a truck. He studied furiously to get his class 1 license and pass so he could get into trucking as soon as possible. Dale applied to work at the same company as his father. The two of them even got to run together on various convoy trips. Sid thought it was great that Dale could do what he did without being an exact carbon copy of himself. At the end of each day the two would bond over a feed of clams, because Sid’s wife, Charlene, the mother of Dale, was not right there with them to encourage them to pick something more healthy.
It was during one of these clam feeds that Dale had something important he wanted to tell his father.
“Hey Dad,” Dale said. “I’m thinking about making a change.”
“What kind of change?” Sid asked. At 21 years old Dale had been all over the continent transporting goods to the people who needed them. Together they had shared the pleasure of many convoys over the past three years. Did Dale really want to throw all that away so soon?
“I think I’d like to be an Ice Road Trucker. What do you think of that? Dale asked.
Sid leaned forward. “It’s not for me. But if you put your mind to it, I believe you could pull it off.”
“I just think it would be a cool thing to do during the winter months. You get to see parts of the world few others would go, and you get to help people who live in remote areas get all of the things they need. Then I could still run with you the rest of the year!” Dale exclaimed.
Sid knew Ice Road Trucking was not for just any trucker. The rewards were huge. A person could make a year’s salary in three months. However, there is a huge difference between driving a truck on a regular paved highway, even in the worst of conditions, and driving on a slick track paved with ice in all kinds of weather. If a breakdown occurred in the middle of nowhere Often the truckers would drive across frozen lakes and oceans. Sometimes, trucks would break through the ice and their drivers would plummet helplessly toward a frozen grave.
These thoughts immediately worried Sid. However, he chose to do the stoic father thing and not mention that fact to his son. If this was his dream, and they still got to run together most of the year anyway, Sid wanted Dale to go for it.
“Do some more research and talk to people who actually do that kind of trucking to find out what it’s actually like in real life.” Sid recommended. “It’s good to have as much knowledge about something before you leap into it.”
“Good call, Dad.” Dale said.
The two men. One young, the other older, happily finished their clams and headed home to see what the rest of the weekend held for them.