Saskatchewan Grain Truck Regulations

17 Replies to “Saskatchewan Grain Truck Regulations”

1. Boy, he runs a tight ship over there at quick dick’s tricky farm. Doors on his grain truck, sheer luxury and shows a keen eye to following the code. We never had doors, kept too much dust out.

2. He is getting quite good at illustrating absurdity with absurdity.

3. Only time I drove a grain truck, it was a pain to get moving and I got a little worried about the smoke pouring into the cab through the floorboards. Then I remembered to release the trans brake, and it got a lot better.

4. The trouble with farm trucks is their constant need for costly repairs and the newer ones are no better except the bills are higher. At our place we have Grandpa, Junior, and the old Dodge is Dodgy Girl.

5. Grain Truck? Hell … EVERY farm truck, Right? Unlike all the dude trucks driving the smooth paved roads (built by prior, non-eco-hysteric generations) … farm trucks are actually USED … hard!

   During my ONE summer on the Oregon farm … I got to drive an old Ford truck from 195-something … whose dashboard was a lovely brown … from the chewing tobacco spittle by a prior farmhand, who didn’t like rolling down the window when it was cold. I never touched anything other than the steering wheel and shifter.

   1. I seem to recall that the celebrity Dodge chose to promote the Dude truck was Don Knotts.

6. Hmm, no popping the hood every time you shut it off to make sure that it wasn’t on fire?
   That was the procedure on the 1950 3 ton. Just undo the leather belt that held the hood closed and make sure that the carb wasn’t leaking gasoline onto the manifold.

7. Man, you never drove the old Army Deuce and a half, or serviced one. Six wheel drive in the muck and built like tanks w/o the treads. Diesel, so heat needed to fire it up. Like a torch in winter. No cab heater. We learned to drive ’em…..backwards, everywhere with those dinky round 6 inch mirrors. Figuring was, if you could drive it backwards at speed with these tanks, forward was a snap. Semi auto shifter gears. Go through buildings and climb walls with ’em. Big space in back to pack grain.

   1. Hmm…Deuce n a halfs – Never drove one, but rode in a few.

      1. Theres one sitting on southside Hwy 599 west of 884, nasty kink in frame between feedbox and cab.

   2. I loved riding the Deuce and a halfs to Washington artillery grounds and other US bases. Our little D look like something from the iron curtain cold war when parked beside the newer US trucks. Also blowing the 50mph governors was fun…

8. Jeez, I’m jealous.

   Never had the luxury of driving any piece of farm / logging equipment that had a closed cab.

9. “Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck”…….Corb Lund, ‘Truck Got Stuck’

10. I don’t think that those regulations apply only in Saskatchewan. I’ve seen trucks adhering to those same standards here in Alberta as well as in NE B. C.

11. Southern Alberta sugar beet truck regulations.
    Very few – you had to have a license plate attached and not allowed to use purple gas on the country roads. This is a photo of the 1946 Chev truck we used on our farm up to early 50s. Six cylinder engine, 5 speed transmission, no signal lights, side dump box, heater in cab was the only luxury. I hauled away many a load of beets like this myself in late 1950s.

    Loading sugar beets

12. Ah memories. My old man had a 1948 Dodge one-ton used to haul wheat from the combine to the bin or from the bin to the grain elevator. It lacked signal lights and brake lights but it did have one solitary taillight. The wipers were operated by vacuum so if you floored the gas, the wipers stopped. When you decelerated, the wipers took off at full speed. The transmission was a 4 speed, unsynchronized marvel that required the driver to perform a maneuver known as “double clutching” in order to change gears with a minimum of grinding. The parking brake was activated by pulling a lever on the floor which caused a mechanism to tighten around the driveshaft. Of course there was no idiot light on the dash warning that the park brake was on so many a trip was made to the combine with the brake on and smoke pouring out from under the truck causing the old man, never a pinnacle of patience, to completely lose his mind as he watched the shit show unfold before his eyes. A severe tongue-lashing awaited the truck driver (usually me) when the trip to the combine was over. Good times.

13. I loved going with grandpa in the grain truck to the elevator as a kid. Middle of summer and you’d be cooking outside on the bald flat prairie of southern Saskatchewan but once you were inside the elevator you’d be as cool as a cucumber.