A test of skills and safety for truckers

REGINA — Driving a big rig at night throughout Saskatchewan is a trip on the wild side for Bonnie Cooper.

“Wildlife is a big challenge,” said the Bison Transport driver. “I see a lot of coyotes running across the road at nighttime.”

But the growing number of deer and moose on Saskatchewan highways is the greatest challenge.

“The moose are really hard to see because apparently their eyes don’t reflect the light at night, so you can’t see them until you’re right on top of them,” Cooper said. “I’ve never hit anything, but I barely missed a porcupine. When I looked at my tire on the passenger side, the quills were still sitting in my tire. That’s how close I got to him.”

Cooper, the only female driver of the 80 Bison Transport drivers based out of Regina, acknowledges that trucking isn’t a traditional career for a woman, but she loves driving 135,000 miles a year.

“My dad was a truck driver when I was little,” Cooper said. “He drove dump trucks and I used to go with him before I went to school. He got me into it. It’s always been my passion to drive.”

Unlike many Saskatchewan residents, she isn’t upset about the condition of the province’s roads. Cooper did note that highways are worse in the spring because of the freeze-thaw cycle.

“Once they repair the potholes, it’s all good until the next spring,” she said.

During the seven years Cooper has been a professional driver, she’s never had an accident. However, she was a tad nervous as she waited to compete in the Professional Truck Driving Championships in Regina on Saturday.

The timed obstacle course tested the skills of 23 drivers in numerous ways — they had to make tight turns, back up on a turn and navigate an area with diminishing clearance.

“You basically have to make these trucks look agile,” said Nicole Sinclair, member services liaison with the Saskatchewan Trucking Association.

The first-place winner in each of the categories: single/single, tandem/tandem, straight truck and single/ tandem and B-train go to the national championship in Quebec in the fall.

“To go on to the national championship, you have to have a clean driving record, so it really is a good motivator for drivers throughout the year to practice safe driving and be aware,” Sinclair said.

Additionally, truck drivers were tested on pre-trip inspections and they wrote an exam that focused heavily on safety.

Murray Coleman, a driving supervisor with Bison Transport, has been behind the wheel of big trucks for 37 years — 35 years of those have been accident free.

“Safety is the biggest thing,” Coleman said. “As a driver, you have to drive for the other person. Even if he’s in the wrong, you’ve got to give him the right-of-way.”

One of his biggest pet peeves is when people don’t turn into the right lane.

“If I can do it with 70 feet of truck, they can do it with a 10-foot car, but they don’t,” Coleman said.

He’s noticed the volume of traffic in Regina has significantly increased in recent years.

“I’ve seen it go from a 10-minute commute downtown to a 30-minute commute,” Coleman said. “The traffic lights need to be more synchronized to move the traffic along.”