PORT HURON, Mich. — After crossing the U.S.-Canada border at the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, Michigan, two veteran drivers for Ontario-based Challenger Motor Freight fueled up and sipped on their freshly brewed coffee at a local Pilot Travel Center and tried to look on the bright side of being rerouted from crossing the Ambassador Bridge.
“We didn’t want to take the [Ontario Highway] 402 because the police are removing protesters along the way and it would slow us down even more, so we...
When Canadian trucker Kerry Delaine, a lease operator from Winnipeg, Manitoba, received his first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine recently, he made a shirt to commemorate the occasion. It has a swastika formed with syringes encircled by the message: “Vaxxed by Force.”
Delaine does not believe the vaccines are safe or effective but said he felt he had no choice. The reason: Starting in early January, foreign truckers — along with other essential workers — will only be able to enter the U.S....
A trucker caught smoking opium while driving on a freeway in Ontario, Canada, was charged and fired by his employer, police said.
Police pulled over the unidentified trucker on Ontario Highway 401, among the busiest in North America, late Friday after receiving a complaint that he was driving erratically, Ontario Provincial Police spokesperson Bill Dickson told FreightWaves.
“Sure enough, he was smoking opium,” Dickson said.
Because the offense resulted in an immediate driver’s license suspension,...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/trucker-smoking-opium-while-driving-police-say
When Canadian trucker Jean Pothier recently tried to schedule a battery of overdue blood tests, he was told to self-isolate for 14 days first over COVID-19 risks. It wasn’t an option for the cross-border lease operator, who pays about CA$3,000 a month for his truck alone on top of a mortgage for the Ontario home he shares with his wife.
“I can’t afford to take the time off,” said Pothier, who drivers for TransX. “I’ll go bankrupt.”
Pothier’s story isn’t an anomaly, industry groups say. Canadian...
https://s29755.pcdn.co/news/canadian-truckers-say-theyre-being-refused-medical-care
Truck driver Robert Mitchell, 69, didn’t think he’d get any of the pay he was owed after Celadon Group shut down Hyndman Transport in December. But in May, about C$6,800 (US$5,000) appeared in his bank account — one of hundreds of payouts likely to go out to former employees of the bankrupt U.S. trucking company’s Canadian subsidiary.
“I have a hatred for Celadon. Every little dime we can get back is a way to say, ‘Screw them,’” Mitchell told FreightWaves. “I was glad to get it.”
It amounts to...
https://s29755.pcdn.co/news/payouts-to-celadons-hyndman-drivers-vindicate-legal-battle
By his own account, truck driver Randy James Ulch seems an unlikely supporter for the protests following George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer.
“I’m a bald white guy with a goatee — a little bit heavyset — and I drive a big truck.” Ulch told FreightWaves. “I kind of fit a certain stereotype.”
The stereotype of a white supremacist, according to Ulch.
But Ulch is an unapologetic anti-racist. The 42-year-old has posted regularly to Facebook about the demonstrations, police...