Two for the Road

Dr. Phil himself would be hard pressed to come up with a better formula for launching a new marriage.

Following a four-month engagement, Helga Hein of Rose Mary, Alta. married Terry Lempriere, and after a two-week honeymoon during which they visited his relatives in Scotland and England, the newlyweds returned to Canada, climbed into a Trans-Freight McNamara truck, and began their lives together.

Four years later, as she cradles their six-month-old daughter, Rachel Lee, Helga Lempriere says heading out on the road as a team was the "best way to start a marriage. "When we were just dating, I saw Terry a few times a month. We went from that to 24/7."

Helga also got a rare glimpse into her husband's earlier life. She says, "I knew what kind of things he'd come through. It was important for me to see what his life had been."

Furthermore, what could be more bonding than a new husband leaping out of a sleeper to help his bride of less-than-a-year avoid totaling the tractor-trailer that she's driving?

It happened during a North Dakota springtime storm, in 2004.
The new Kenworth that Helga was piloting was making its maiden trip and Terry was in the sleeper fiddling with a video camera. He wanted to record the fact that it was snowing – in May. Just then, a reckless SUV driver in the passing lane lost control in the slush as he was passing Helga's steer tire.

"He hit the tire, bounced off and then hit it again," Helga recalls. "By the second time, Terry was up and holding the back of my seat and the steering wheel. We ended up picking rhubarb in the ditch. But we were upright, and the SUV driver wasn't hurt."

The sleeper took a beating, but the KW suffered minimal mechanical damage and the honeymooners were able to drive it back home.
Another lesson learned.

For almost three years, as the couple criss-crossed North America, they cottoned on to a few things every long-haul driver knows, particularly about how the people who lead the trucking industry could make some changes if they really wanted to attract and keep young couples who like to drive. On this matter, Terry's thinking about offering his services as a consultant.
In 2006, Terry and Helga put a down payment on their first house and settled in Grande Prairie. He drives locally now, and their teaming days are fading in their rear-view mirror.

However, their years on the road have been immortalized in a series of stories titled "A Road Called Home," published in this magazine over the past eight months. The stories chronicled the Lempriere's 10 day, 10,000 km trip from St. John's to Victoria, driving for J&R Hall, out of Ayr, Ont.
The trip was also featured in the British magazine Truck&Driver, a publication Terry discovered in his early teens, growing up in England. A similar story called Long-Distance Diary about a trip from St. John's to Whitehorse caught his attention, he ripped it out and hung it on his bedroom wall.

"That's what sparked my interest in coming to Canada and giving this a shot, and get my sticky little hands on a Kenworth or Peterbilt with all the lights and shining chrome."

At 16, Terry left England, moved to Southwestern Ontario, and landed a job at the Hunt Windows factory in London, Ont. There, on his lunch breaks, he would sit by the side of the 401, watch the semis cruise by, and figure out how to get inside one of them.

He earned his CDL, talked his way into the Cargill Fertilizer company to deliver the stuff around to farms in the area, and then answered an ad for a team driver. An owner-operator was looking for a co-driver for trips through the southwestern U.S.

"It was my first job" he recalls. "We were doing trips to L.A. and Chicago and stuff and for me it was just like being a kid in a candy store. I felt like king of the hill driving that thing and seeing those big American truckstops and the interstate system."

The problem was, Mr. Owner-operator was a shyster. Says Lempriere: "Turns out his idea of a co-driver was, ‘Come along with me and see all these beautiful sights and that's your pay.'"

Even that failed to discourage the new driver, who went on to drive for several haulers before meeting Helga, in 2000. A mutual friend and fellow driver Paul Gabor brought the pair together and two things happened. Terry, tiring of what he calls the seamier side of the trucking world, turned to Christianity; and Helga turned to Terry.

"I liked the way he thought things through and followed his plans," she says. "I like the way she looked in jeans, too," adds Terry.

The plan? Helga would earn her CDL, they'd get married and head out on the road together. After two years, they'd reassess their situation and if everything was going okay, they'd settle down and buy a house. And just like Helga predicted, they stuck to the plan.

The two of them agree that life on the road could be a lot more inviting for married teams if some of the little problems were ironed out.

Truckstops could be a little more female friendly; companies could reward superb drivers with family-oriented weekends away; trucks could be spec'd with women drivers in mind; those kinds of things.

Still, neither Terry, 44, nor Helga, 35, would trade their experience on the road, and she says her friends are very impressed with their accomplishments.

Finally, they've both renewed their CDLs. Just in case.

Currently Online @ highwaySTAR

Our Driving Forces Truckers Pull Together Safety Blitz