Old & Slow #12
Transportation

By Bill Elder

In September of 1978, I was transferred to the Transportation Department to begin my Apprenticeship to become a licensed mechanic. In Canada, no one who is not a licensed mechanic or an apprentice is allowed by law to work on any vehicle that is licensed for the road. Of course, this is chiefly ignored by hobbyists working on their own vehicles at home, but you would never be allowed to turn a wrench on a vehicle at any commercial garage, vehicle dealership, or transportation garage unless you are licensed. Apprentices must work under the supervision of a licensed mechanic and the Government requires 7200 hours of on-the-job training, plus an additional 720 hours of training at an accredited Community College. The ratio of apprentices in a shop to mechanics is 8 mechanics to 1 apprentice. The Government program specifies so many hours on each of the various fields, engines, transmissions, differentials, brakes, suspension etc. The hours spent are recorded on a daily basis until the required training is completed, at that time the apprentice will have to take a written test administered by an Officer of the Ministry of Transport. If you pass the exam, you will be awarded a Government License. You can do the math and see that you are into a program that will take about 4.5 years to complete. In addition, I had to serve an additional number of hours, working on heavy trucks and trailers to add a Diesel Endorsement to my certificate. It was a common joke to answer one of the questions on the exam in this manner. “Name three thread types”? Answer, “National Fine, National Course and Stripped”.

The Transportation building is located on the grounds of the Windsor Assembly Plant and is 240’ wide by 940’ long. There are offices upstairs at both ends of the building. At the East end of the building the Dispatch Offices and Driver locker rooms are on the second floor. At the west end of the building the upstairs office space was not used. At one time, this space was the engineering office for the Dodge Power Wagons. When I came to the garage, there were 44 mechanics working there. 5 or 6 were working for the engineering department. In modern times, the engineering department has greatly expanded and they have their own facility, off-site. The rest of the mechanics worked on the 1,000 Executive lease cars and the truck fleet. The Company Lease Car program has also moved into their own building, but in those days, cars were on one side of the building and trucks were across the aisle. There were 4 of us apprentices and we bounced back and forth across the aisle, depending on our training needs. The cars were all current model year and didn’t take a lot of maintenance, however the Lessors could be described as demanding. Most of the maintenance consisted of oil changes and tune ups. Clean work and road tests.

Across the aisle, dirty and heavy was the order of the day. Chrysler Transport was primarily engaged in Inter City pick up and delivery. By inter city, I mean driving all over Detroit to pick up small loads. Chrysler Canada had a small marshalling yard under the Ambassador Bridge. Trailers with small loads would be dropped there and the loads incorporated into trailer full loads to be brought back to Windsor Assembly. Detroit had by-laws that governed the length of trucks engaged in this type of work, so for us the Dodge LCFs, (Low Cab Forward) made up about 95% of the fleet. These trucks were all 1970 or 71s. There were a few 1976 Dodge trucks that resembled overgrown pickups. These were the only trucks that had automatic transmissions -- Allison Automatics and they shifted hard.

The trucks had three power plants; the in-line 6-cylinder Cummins diesels (extremely reliable work horses), the 318 Detroit Two Stroke Diesels (powerful, finicky and unsuited for our stop and go short haul business), or the gasoline fueled 413 truck engines. Transmissions were Fuller Road Rangers with 13 or 10 speeds in the diesels and 5 speeds in the gasoline trucks.

We hardly ever had to rebuild a Cummins. They would do the job all day long without complaint. In the winter, we had no indoor storage. At one time there were rails in the truck parking area and we had block heaters in the trucks. The problem was household electrical was out of our wheel house so we had to rely on plant electricians to maintain the electrical outlets on the parking rails and they had to be begged to make up extension cords for us. As soon as it turned cold, word got out that the trucks were plugged in and extension cords vanished. The whole thing came to a bitter end when a driver tripped over a rail in a snow storm and the Safety Department had the rails removed. Here’s the starting technique for a Cummins diesel after a cold weekend rest. It’s a three-man job. We had to tow them to start them, so a driver in the tow truck. These Cummins all had decompression handles below the dash which looked like a parking brake handle. When you lifted the handle, you would open all of the valves and take the turning resistance out of the engine. Once the truck was being towed at a good clip, the driver of that truck would drop the compression handle and hopefully the engine would start. But wait a minute, what about the third guy? That would quite often be the poor apprentice, perched on the fuel tank/cab steps, hanging onto the outside mirror for dear life with one hand and spraying either into the air intake with the other. Invigorating Indeed!

The Detroits would start with a tow, but they had an Achille’s heal. They only had 5 lbs. oil pressure at an idle. So our scenario of short hop delivery around Detroit was hurting them badly. You had a very hard time getting them to deliver any heat in the Winter, so while drivers waited for trailers to be loaded, there were hours of idle time. The joke in the shop was 318 Detroit, 3 months on the road, 1 month in the shop for an engine rebuild and 8 thousand dollars. They were powerful, V-8 two strokes, supercharged and they would easily propel those old LCFs to 90 MPH. We had two Detroits that were the pride of the fleet. Even the cabs were pristine. Chrysler Canada maintains a parts depot in Mississauga, Ont. (near Toronto). Every night, parts from Windsor were delivered to Mississauga. The loaded trailer would be taken from Windsor by a Windsor Driver. He would meet a Toronto Driver with the empty, returning trailer in London, Ont. They would switch rigs and return to their homes. I can tell you one thing. In the winter they both wore snowmobile suits.

The 413s were way past their prime by the time I came to the garage. The 413 truck engines have truck cylinder heads, camshafts, heavy duty cooling and a big Holley 4-barrel carburetor. There were two old time mechanics who constantly worked on the midnight shift, rebuilding (hacking) 413 engines. They also played around rebuilding water pumps. More scary stuff. I installed one of their water pumps on an engine. I launched the water pump shaft and fan blades deep into the radiator while just driving the truck out of the shop. I watched them use a hand-held cylinder hone to bore an engine out 30 over. Are you kidding me? Hand grenades! As a lowly apprentice I was not to question my betters, but finally I went to my General Foreman and complained about the waste. I said, “Why not order some 440 short blocks, brand new and swap the truck components into them.” He didn’t take my suggestion.

Shortly after my arrival, the company purchased 10 new R code Mack trucks. In keeping with the Detroit by-law, The R Model Macks are short with offset cabs, mainly used as the bases for cement mixers. The Dodge gasoline powered trucks developed more serious problems, so they became divided into 3 groups. There was a group that was in use everyday, a second surplus group that was still licensed and could be used if needed and a third retired group that we regularly stole parts from to keep the licensed trucks going. During the 39 years that I was at the garage only one worker was seriously injured. I’ll call him Dog. He was airing up tires on a trailer. He was airing up a rear tire when the front tire blew out the side wall. He was thrown about six feet. Here’s a lesson -- he was only hit by compressed air. He spent 6 months in the hospital before returning and didn’t go back to his role as Tire Man. My Boss kept him busy doing odd jobs. One day we had a prediction of heavy snow and bitter cold. My Boss told Dog to go out and get the back up Dodges started. Dog is gone all day. At the end of the day, he’s a popsicle. He marches up to our Boss and holds up two fingers yelling “Two trucks! Two! That’s all I could get to start! Besides they don’t have any steering wheels ” Turns out he wasn’t trying to start the reserve fleet -- he was trying to start the parts trucks.