Hello from Canada.

[oilpatchtrucker]

Hi. Shawn here form Hinton Alberta Canada. I am an owner operator working in the oil and gas industry along the foothills of the rocky mountians. I own and operate a liquid tanker and haul oil, water, drilling mud, methanol, frac oils ect. My work is 80% off road. My truck is a 2004 Western Star tri-drive. My trailer is a 2004 Lazer Inox stainless steel 44m3 tank.
My wife and I have 5 kids ages 4 to 15 so we have a very busy house. I chose this line of work because it keeps me close to home. We are in spring break up right now so I have the rest of the month of may off. I have put a few pics up in a gallery. I have more to post so keep an eye out for some more off road trucking pics!

Shawn

Welcome to the forum oilpatchtrucker, alway's glad to see our brother's and sister's from Canada.
What's the empty weight on that truck and trailor you have? I bet it is pretty heavy.

[oilpatchtrucker]

Yeah she's heavy. Full of fuel, rigged it weighs 24000kg's. Or about 53,000 lbs.

Yea I figured it was. I used to work for a company driving a quad axel western star (Badger was the name of the company) We located utilities but I believe part of this company worked the oil fields in Canada with the same trucks.
Anyway mine was a 1999 day cab Quad axel with a triple frame with a cat engine and 18 speed transmission. This truck fuul of fuel weighed 53,000 lbs, we also had a 3,000 gallon water tank and a 3,000 gallon tank the mud and debris went. This was a huge vacum truck.
Fully loaded with mud fuel and water and 2 man crew it weighed before one time at 85,000 lbs.
We had a 2500 psi pressure pump that would shoot water out of a 7 foot wand. I have cut black top with it before. The vacum was stout enough to pick up a 350 pound piece of concrete. The truck had a 25 foot vacum tube and boom on it also.
It was pretty interesting sometimes.

[oilpatchtrucker]

Yep. Badger Daylighting has an office here with several of those units. They locate pipelines and other utilities and have locations all over Alberta. I have supplied water to thier units for some of the larger jobs. I did not realize they where that big in the US as well. I'm finding that alot of the companies here have larger main branches there. Our oil and gas industry is still very small compered to the activity in the south western USA. But it is growing at an outragous rate. There is way too much work here and not enough people! I went to look at a new Pete today. I was told I could not even order one untill Febuary 2007! The factory is already over sold and can't put out any more trucks this year than what is currently on order. So I ordered another Western Star. But I won't see it untill October or November. Crazy.

I don't know if they are very big here in the USA I only knew of one place that had them. This was in Lexington,KY. where I worked.
We were called out when it was to dangerous for a backhoe to locate utilities, or piping in the ground. We were really busy when companies were working around places you didn't want a spark to occur.

That's to bad about the Pete, but in my job I am glad you got another western star.
I am a driveaway driver now. We deliver "new" truck's to dealer's and or companies all over the USA and Canada.
We deliver all the truck's except the Pete's and Kenworth's, there was talk about we would be getting them to. But I have not heard any late new's.