Road Trip to Ft McMurray Alberta

[BC Mack]

Gentlemen,

since most of you seem to live near to the East coast I thought I would show some of the scenery on the other side of the continent... I must firstly apologise for lack of hitchikers, wimmins and daisy dukes that other travellers on this site seem to find on a regular basis... we Canucks just have less exciting lives than those south of our border... LOL

From Vancouver BC it is about 1000 miles (note, we have km's up here but I know you guys are bad at math) to what has become Canada's oil capitol and the highest household income per capita in Canada.

Heading NE we meet the infamous and notorious Coquihalla Hwy (The Coke) now famous by means of a TV series of a truck wrecker team "Highway through Hell" on Discovery Channel. Passing Mount Robson the highest point in the Canadian Rockies and on to Edmonton Alberta... that was the easy bit.

Highway 63 heads north for a five hour trip to Ft McMoney... at a very controlled rate the ultra heavy and extremely wide oil production modules are shipped along this road, mixed in with general truck traffic, B train fuel hauls and oil workers pick-up trucks (they all got new ones with one months paycheck).

From my observations on the road, in the large yards that expand out of FMM... there are very few Macks to be found..!!! if you are into Heavy Haul then Western Stars and KW C550's will give you goosebumps... awesome machines... and the Mammoet guys are here in big numbers too...

anyway... mandatory pics attached

BC Mack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by BC Mack

[daveigou]

Great post. No apology needed. I didn't come here to see Daisy Duke.

thanks

[RFCDrum]

Cool pics.

Rob

[farmer52]

Very nice pics. The snow covered mountain is impressive. Thanks!

[umodelnut]

Awesome!!!

[slpwlker]

cool pics. Mammoet has some very impressive equipment. like watching the push pull setups. like the tridrive Pete with pan on. Randy P will appreciate it as well I bet

[j hancock]

Not too many avalanche tunnels here on the east coast!

Interesting the signage change to indicate a pushing operation on the safety truck and push truck instead of just saying oversize. Not sure the exact terminology.

Jim

[mackniac]

nice part of our country ! been in B.C. 3 times and in Alberta one time ad it is beautiful .

Western Star truck are good truck too .

[h67st]

Great scenery! Post pics anytime.

[BC Mack]

Interesting the signage change to indicate a pushing operation on the safety truck and push truck instead of just saying oversize. Not sure the exact terminology.

Jim

I had similar thoughts when I saw the differing signs so looked up the codes for Alberta... and was even more confused. I believe the yellow 'wide load' is used up to a certain width as I saw a few smaller loads with one pilot and they just had the yellow sign and red flags on the corners... the "D" with red stripes indicates loads beyond that standard and I saw a dimensional drawing as the red stripes are not all the same width or separation... still working on what the "D" means?

for extreme loads there were always three pilot cars whether it was just a tractive unit, or tractive and pusher... one 'way' out front, perhaps half a mile and one at both front and rear of the load...

in a two hour section of road I passed at least ten of these extreme loads, and they rarely pull over to let the snake of traffic behind go past... you are on your own, just don't hit nothing... and for the most part hwy 65 is two lane... the smaller loads of machinery seemed to keep up a reasonable speed and caused less congestion.

adding one more photo for the axle loading experts... saw a few of these for the first time, note that on the tri-axle jeep there is a set of duals in between and outside of the main pair..!!! I assume they needed a weight capacity within a fixed wheelbase or had turning radius issues and this was the solution, sure makes it wide though.

BC Mack

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by BC Mack

[slpwlker]

Ok D signs mean dimensional. Go figure oversize load wasn't good enough.

Is that another set of duals on the outside making it a tridem? I have never seen that. The little jodog or single axle jeep make the truck a tridem as Alot of Canada doesn't recognize lift axles. Also keeps the truck to 244" Wb. Tridrives up to I think 277" are allowed. Which would be 294" on a tandem. Seriously thinking of converting mine to tridrive and start running Canada. Looks like A Pete Sleeper. Never seen the big Cat 24H Graders moved complete.

I am thinking because the guy that just drug my load to Alberta had problems reloading. Frost law is still going on up there and if these are resent they need all the axles to get to 16k an Axle or something like that. he was allowed 16 steer,49k drives on a tridrive and 50 on the trailer tridems. Idk why the difference on the axle groups but that is what they told him. What might move on smaller trailers now needs alot more axles for the frost laws.

[BAD DOG]

Nice pics. Beautiful country up there at your end of it alot nicer than down here in the as$%#le of Canada where I live. We have'nt had snow down here for a month now just alot of rain this month. If you had hitch hackers in your pics they would probably be able to cut glass it still looks cold up there. I got a few friends moved out to Alberta I'm going to have to take a road trip out there someday.

[other dog]

Great pictures, with scenery like that you don't need to enhance them like you do in Winfall. That mountain is beautiful. Some of my favorite pictures on Hank's are the old B.C. trucking pictures, and the old Fraser Canyon Highway pictures.

I'm gonna use the Mt. Robson picture as my new screen saver pic.

[Vladislav]

Great pics!

The mountain looks beautiful.