It is not just anyone who would be willing to haul hazardous materials like sulfuric acid for hours at a time, but Claudette Savoie absolutely loved that job.
Then again, she had admired trucks ever since she was a little girl growing up on her parents’ farm near Campbellton, adjacent to the New Brunswick and Quebec border. Those big rigs used to roll through the town and slowly climb a hill and disappear over the horizon.
It hardly seemed like an occupation for a little girl, and at first it wasn’t. She married and had two children. Then, in her 30s, she decided to pursue her dream – and ran smack into roadblocks.
As odd as it might seem, New Brunswick issued licences for truck drivers, but offered no training. To drive a big rig, Savoie had to head outside the province for accreditation. That meant Nova Scotia.
“It was a hard process to get into,” she said. “It took me three years to get into the course.”
On top of everything else, her parents “discouraged me. Mom was worried. I was doing long haul all over the States in my 30s.”
Savoie added, “She prayed a lot.”
With her husband deceased, her children stayed with her parents while she worked. She started the long haul routes after the kids went to college. She was the only woman out of 117 truckers based in New Brunswick who held an A licence for a tractor trailer.
She got hired by the Irvings, a provincial juggernaut with businesses ranging from forestry to steamships to oil and gas and Newsprint.
“I was the only female with 155 guys at Irvings,” she remembers. “The guys accepted me,” she said of the RST tanker division, where she stayed for seven years.
Respect came because she was hauling the most dangerous of goods, called simply, “caustics.” That included chlorine, sulphuric acids and also ammonia. She joked she could pull into a truck stop and find parking almost immediately because other truckers would pull out or move rather than stay beside the materials she carried on her truck. She used to leave Dalhousie loaded to Woodland, Maine, back to St. John, reload, then to Atholville, round trip. That was a regular route for her for some time.
The chemicals were used in paper mills to “wash the paper stock.” She also hauled to Newfoundland. Those loads were used to clean beer bottles.
She said of those days, “I loved it. I miss the tankers. It’s a different lifestyle. You get respect out there.” But she loves trucking in general, and drove flatbed for a while, too.
“It’s in your blood,” she said. “It’s a feeling of empowerment. You have this big rig and you’re doing this job that has to be done – like hauling caustics. It was a good job. It was a dangerous job and it gave you a feeling of accomplishment when you were done.”
She joined Laidlaw, a trucking industry giant and worked there for a while. A Native band planning its own fuel depot at Eel River Crossing in New Brunswick asked if she would join them.
“They brought me in,” she said of that work for a year. “I knew the roads and was a long haul operator. They figured I could bring in customers.”
She sold her truck and decided to come to Ontario to take courses in trucking, with an eye to training truck drivers.
She learned the technique of being an instructor. She took, and is now qualified to teach Motor Vehicle Fleet Driver Training, Air Brake Endorsement Instruction; Air Brake Adjustment Instruction, Hours of Service (dealing with log books), Trip Inspection, Transportation of Dangerous goods (the rules laid down for that one fill a book just on the techniques for loading and unloading) as well as Workplace Hazardous Material Instruction, Driver Profile and Maintenance Profile, Commercial Vehicle Operators Record workshops, as well a school bus driver’s improvement course (mandatory since 2009) and Canada Safety Council course.
She said “All coach and school bus driver’s need to take it or they can’t use” those vehicles.
She is also qualified to teach the Professional Drivers Improvement Course by the Canada Safety Council. She also can teach an In Vehicle Fleet Driver Training.
Parts of her course include up and down gear shifting, backing and docking, coupling and uncoupling, city, highway, and night driving, pre- and post-trip inspection, border crossing and log book work and, of course, transportation of dangerous goods.
With those qualifications, it did not take Savoie long to get a job training budding truck drivers. The problem was, she did not like the way the company operated, because students had to fight to get truck driving time.
So she started her own business on County Road 18, where she has a classroom, a semi-tractor, and a D licence truck. Z licences are required for any truck with air brakes, which means all the bigger trucks. She trains up to 10 people at a time in the classroom, and provides one-on-one truck driving instruction.
Savoie said in the first hour of class many of the men have the attitude “What does she know?”
But only for an hour. With 20 years of experience and much of it handling dangerous material, she soon has their respect.
That is because when it comes to teaching what the future truckers need to know, “I deliver it from real world experience. It’s not just book talk. I’ve been there.”
She can quickly tell which students will succeed and who will not. “When I start training someone I know within an hour if they are going to make it.”
The business is not a 9 to 5 job, and anyone expecting that will soon be gone. Further, she said, some think a truck driving job will allow them to see the world.
“They’ll a see truck driving route,” she said.
She smiles when asked about Global Positioning Units to help drivers find their destinations, and said any truckers who want such a thing should buy a special trucker model.
The regular GPS might show the route from one town to another, but the trucker model shows bridges and underpasses, and their height restrictions.
In her classes, students receive a special, and very large atlas with truck routes, underpasses and bridges clearly marked – for Canada and the United States. As well, it shows the weigh scales that truckers might have to check into on their trip.
While the business is becoming high technology (a Canadian firm can chart the progress and speed of a truck in Texas in real time), truckers have to drive, and pay attention to a lot of little details.
She offers Z licence courses every second week, and AZ and DZ licence classes every two to four weeks depending on the demand.
Savoie does not stagnate in the classroom, either. She said a local trucking firm calls her from time to time when it needs an extra driver.
She takes each of her students into Mississauga via Highway 401 so they can get a feel for driving a big truck in traffic. She is able to calm most of those students by explaining she trusts them – because they are driving her trucks. She also teaches students how to plan a trip. “I don’t just train around the block. We do real life experiences.”
She is finding, too, that there are a number of women taking her courses. Many of them are wives of truckers and they want to travel with their husbands.
But, since husbands can’t teach and qualify them, women come to her.
Ask Savoie about job conditions, and she is right up front.
When she started driving for one company, as the new kid in the fleet, she was out on the road for 36 straight days. While not all of those days were spent behind the wheel, she was not at home, either. She added in that first year, she had 16 days at home.
There are other issues, too. “I hit a moose in 1995” outside if Moncton, New Brunswick. It was 4:30am and there was a mother, father, and baby moose. “I got the calf,” she said, noting the damage to her rig was $23,000.
There are a few fringe benefits. When truckers walk into a truck stop for a meal, they get served first – no matter how many car drivers are ahead of them. The restaurant appreciates their business and wants them to return.
Savoie said when she started her business, she was a little worried about how it would work out, since she was putting everything she had into it. But, she said, she placed a small advertisement in The Wellington Advertiser in that first week over five years ago, and received 18 phone calls. She was on her way.
Savoie believes there is still a good living to be made in trucking, and lots of hauling to do, because how else are people going to get the goods they need?
But, she said, these days she advises new truckers to work for someone for at least a couple of years, and to have some good cash reserves before buying their own trucks.
Anyone interested in learning more about becoming a truck driver can contact Savoie at savoietrainingservices@hotmail.ca, or visit her website at savoietrainingservices.ca.
