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Midnight Run
by Steve Macleod
Highway 63 between Edmonton and Fort McMurray can be one of the most scenic drives in Alberta, but it's also one of the most dangerous. In mid-summer, you can travel north by sunlight until about 11 p.m. And when the sun goes down, if it's a clear night, your view of the Northern Lights is likely to be spectacular. You won't be alone, however. Oilsands development in the Wood Buffalo Region has brought an influx of traffic to the highway, which stretches about 450 km. And the increased congestion along the two-lane road has created a lot of safety issues during recent years. Around the turn of the century, meaning this century, about 2000 vehicles each day used Highway 63, and just six years later that number had nearly doubled to 3400. That prompted the Alberta government to step in with increased law enforcement in 2006. Sheriffs were stationed at the RCMP detachment in Boyle, about 160 km north of Edmonton, and within seven months the officers had issued 5700 traffic violations, removed 37 suspected impaired drivers from the road, attended 17 collisions, and dealt with 25 outstanding arrest warrants. The number of fatalities along the corridor dipped from 22 in 2007 to nine in 2008. The province has launched other projects to improve safety along the corridor, one of which includes twinning the tree-lined highway. The first 13 km of road south of Fort McMurray have been completed after two years of work. "It took two years to twin those 13 kilometers, but I'd like to see them do the rest in five years," says Irving Szmydt, a driver with Dukes Transport out of Edmonton. "The highway used to be not as busy, but now it's packed most of the time. It's been getting better, though, with the Sheriffs out." It's a run Szmydt - or Shmitty, as he's called - knows well. For 10 years now, he's made the 11-hour round trip five nights a week. On occasion he'll pull heavy equipment on a flatdeck, but most of the time Shmitty's tractor is attached to a set of Rocky Mountain doubles. Hauling a 27-ft trailer hitched onto the back of a 53-footer comes with a few conditions. There's a stretch of highway just outside the northeast corner of Edmonton where the long combination vehicles are only allowed after 7 p.m. On the return leg, the rigs are banned from the same stretch between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. So, a typical day will see Shmitty get to the yard in Edmonton at about 6:30 p.m. and return at about 5:30 a.m. the following day. More often than not it turns out to be an easy run, and really, he says the hardest part was reversing his lifelong wake/sleep patterns - he had to learn how to work all night and sleep during the day. "It probably took me about five years to get used to," he tells me. He used to drink coffee by the pot to help stay awake, but it didn't agree with his stomach. Now he has a whole system in place. His body is running on a different circadian rhythm, he figures, and he keeps his body on that cycle by staying up late and sleeping in on his days off. As well, he sleeps in the basement of his house where it's darker, and he runs a fan to insulate him from outside noise. "It's a little bit harder in the summer, though, with construction, lawnmowers, babies crying and dogs barking," Shmitty adds. The 52-year-old has come a long way since his days as a swamper in Drumheller, Alta., and he's dabbled in other occupations, but he really enjoys driving truck. When he was in grade 8, his classroom window looked out at the Hi-Way 9 Express terminal and Shmitty wished he was over there making some money, rather than being stuck in a classroom. His teacher got fed up with him paying more attention to the outside than his studies, so she moved him away from the window. It didn't work. After he turned 16, Shmitty went and joined the carrier as a swamper making $2.10 an hour. Eventually, he got his driver's licence, then his class 1, and he began hauling freight in a little Jimmy 427 gas pot. At one point, Shmitty was even working as a terminal manager in Edmonton, but ultimately he just wanted to be behind the wheel - and not as an owner-operator. "When I go home at night I just want to sleep, not worry about insurance, parking and all other kinds of bills," he says. "I really like driving. You're your own boss out there on the highway, I'm home every night, I know exactly where I'm heading every day, and I make pretty good money." Not only does Shmitty like driving, but it turns out he's been pretty good at it, especially from a safety aspect. Aside from altercations with three unlucky moose, he hasn't had any accidents along the treacherous Highway 63. And one of those moose hit Shmitty, not the other way around, which did a whole lot of damage to the driver's side fender. But moose aren't the only problem along Highway 63. In Shmitty's opinion people are in too much of a hurry these days. I was supposed to ride shotgun in Shmitty's 2006 Kenworth W900 daycab one night, but it was postponed for a couple of days. He told me that was probably for the best, as the night I missed was cold and snowy, which put a number of cars in the ditches lining the highway. On our actual trip two nights later, the weather had warmed up to -1C in Edmonton and -11C in Fort McMurray, and we only saw three vehicles in the ditch - one of them, Shmitty pointed out, a holdover from two nights back. "The important thing is to arrive alive," adds Shmitty. "When in doubt, back off the gas, and always doublecheck everything." Shmitty pulls over a couple of times during the drive to make sure everything is still attached and running as it should. He says if we were hauling a flatdeck he'd probably pull over a couple more times. He's a self-proclaimed company man and says he always wants to do things properly and to the best of his ability. Which is probably one of the reasons Highway 63 hasn't made a statistic out of him.
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