Pro-Trucker Magazine

This issue’s Rig of the Month driver comes from a truck-driving family that is very well known in Western Canada. I first met Darwin, his brother Jeff, Jeff’s son Braden and his Dad, John, at the Alberta Big Rig Weekends, and I honestly can’t remember ever seeing him when he didn’t have a big smile on his face. Like many drivers back in the day, he came up old school and is truly one of the professionals.

Hi, my name is Darwin Hildebrand, and I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (Please don’t hold that against me, as I have been an Albertan my whole life). My Dad was a driver for Reimer Express Lines, and when I was three months old, he transferred to Edmonton as a terminal manager. That didn’t last long, as the driving bug was deeply rooted in him, so he went to work driving for Arnold Brothers Transport.

My first recollection of a truck was riding with my Dad in an old B-model Mack with a large tachograph on the green dash. I was in awe as I watched him drive. My Dad quit that job and bought a 67 Chevy 3-tonne that he put on with Northern Messenger in Edmonton. That was the start of my Dad’s lease operator career.

As a kid, I would walk down to the corner of Argyl Road and 86 Street and watch for hours as the trucks drove by. One day, I saw my Dad drive by in his old 67-box truck, so I walked over to where he was unloading. I jumped into his truck and pushed the clutch in. The truck rolled ahead, and my Dad came running out, wanting to know what was going on. He saw me behind the wheel and wanted to know where I came from. After that, I rode with him every Saturday.

One day we were driving that old crappy truck, and as we climbed the quite steep 105th Street hill, Dad ran out of gas, and we came to a complete stop. Fortunately, there was a tow truck behind us with a big push bumper, and we backed into him. He held us as Dad got out to switch manually to the secondary tank. Several pumps of the pedal later, and off we went.

Moving up in the world, Dad bought his first tractor-trailer, a Dodge with a goofy-looking hood and fold-out fenders. It had a Cummins diesel with a five and two and was super loud. As a kid, that was my first experience with twin sticks, and it amazed me how he went through the gears. He put that truck on with Freeway Transport hauling gasoline, and it turned out to be junk, so he sold it back to the dealership and bought his first International. It was a 1977 TranStar 4200, his first brand-new truck with a 318 and a 13-speed.

When I was 13, my Dad asked me if I wanted to drive, and I said, “Heck ya.” He pulled it over on the Beverly Bridge in Edmonton and let me drive back to our home in Ardrossan. He wouldn’t let me go into 13th gear – I could only go into 12th. I drove it home, turned it into the yard, unhooked it, and put it in the shop. That was my first experience driving a truck, and I was hooked. To some degree, I drove a tractor-trailer on the road before I drove a car.

Throughout high school, my Dad had different trucking jobs. One of them was with All Weather Windows as their first owner-operator. One time, my Dad was trucking, and they had a rush load to Yellowknife, NWT, so my Dad trucked it up there. He got to Yellowknife, and they realized they sent the wrong product. My Dad turned right around and came home. He was exhausted, so my Mom took me out of school and dropped me off at a meeting point. I hopped in with my Dad and drove most of the way back to Yellowknife.

On another occasion, he had a job hauling pet food out of the US. It was a week before Christmas, and I was out of school just goofing off when Mom called to tell me that I had to go and drive with Dad. I was both nervous and excited to drive to the US. I jumped in the truck, an old 1977 Freightliner cabover, and off we went. I was driving through Saskatchewan, and of course, as a youngster, I always drove faster than my Dad. Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and Dad yelled at me from the bunk to pull over. I flipped the Jake on and realized I had blown the right front steer tire. We called a service truck, pulled a rear tire off, and put it on the front so we could carry on.

Dad drove to the border, where he went into customs while I stayed in the truck. I didn’t know where he went, so I wandered into customs. The customs officers asked, “Well, who the hell are you?” After producing my driver’s license, I was left alone in the customs office. Finally, my Dad came in and rescued me, and off we went. The trip went fairly well, and since it was Christmas time, there weren’t supposed to be any scales open. We were counting on that as my Dad didn’t have the proper operating authority to drive in that state. I was driving, and Dad was sleeping in the bunk when I saw flashing scale lights ahead and went ‘uh-oh”. I pulled into the scale to find state troopers running the scale house. One trooper had a huge loudspeaker and was yelling at everyone. I drove across the axle scale but went too far. I hit the brakes but didn’t stop fast enough and rolled off the scale. The trooper yelled at me to back that f’n truck up. I got the drive axle on the scale, and he yelled at me to come inside. I wasn’t overloaded by Canadian standards but I was by American standards.

I pulled the trailer over the scale and parked. Dad jumped into the driver’s seat, and I moved over to the jump seat. Dad panicked as he didn’t have his logbook ready. He wasn’t sure how to log both of us into one logbook. Soon enough, there was a knock on the door, and the state trooper was standing there with his gun drawn. Sheer panic set in, and we went into the scale and talked with “grumpy Gus.” Another state trooper said we were overloaded, didn’t have operating authority, and didn’t have the logbook done correctly. Then the trooper asked me if I was 21. I was only 18, so I didn’t answer him yes or no. He asked me if I knew the fine for driving underage in the US. We didn’t know, so he told us it was $5,000.00. They gave us three tickets, so Dad wrote them a company cheque, and I was told not to drive. Dad drove for an hour and had to pull over as he was tired. I jumped into the driver’s seat and carried on. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.

We dropped our load and reloaded with dog food for the trip back to Alberta. I went with him to unload the dog food, and that is when my trucking career started. I was 18 years old, and they needed a driver for a little 1 tonne. I drove their 1-tonne delivering pet food around the city for a year. After that year, I decided that trucking wasn’t my thing – I didn’t want to grow up like my Dad, being away from home all the time, so I took a job at the Tire Warehouse, thinking I would be a mechanic instead. My cousin’s stepdad owned the company, and I felt that working with my cousin would be cool.

After the winter rush, they laid me off, so I went back to the pet food place to see if I could get on with them, as that was a pretty cool job. While I was gone, they had upgraded to an 80-something Ford F600 diesel tandem truck with a 13-speed. George, the owner, asked me if I wanted to drive it, so I said sure, and off I went. I still didn’t have my license, so after a month, I went for my Class 3. I drove that truck around Alberta and into BC, hauling pet food. Again, I thought trucking wasn’t for me, so I returned to the Tire Warehouse as a store manager. I did that for several years but didn’t like working with the public. During that time, my Dad sold his tractor-trailer units and worked his tractor in the city for Truck All. My younger brother Jeff also bought a truck and put it on with Truck All. I was still at the tire shop as I had promised my first wife I would never become a truck driver, but it was a promise I couldn’t keep.

In 1992, I quit the tire shop and, with the help of my father, bought my first truck. Dad was and still is an excellent driver. (At 85, he has recently passed his driving test – lol.) I bought a 1991 Ford LN 9000 single axle body job and signed a contract hauling for Mackenzie and Feinmann Industrial Chemicals. I was in heaven!! I owned my first truck, and it was pretty cool. Owning a truck requires a shop, so my Dad, brother, and I rented one.

One day, a few doors down, one of our shop partners had a cool 1985 Freightliner FLC Classic with a 400 cummin’s big cam 3 with a 15 direct and 355 gears that he was selling. He asked me if I wanted to buy it, but I thought it was too much truck for me. I asked how much, and he said it was $25,000. I didn’t think it seemed like a lot of money, so I got a loan from the bank. I listed my Ford for $25,000, and it sold in a week. I needed a trailer, so I bought an old 28’ tandem pup. Right about then, I thought I should get my class 1. I drove the old Freightliner for a month and took the lady for a road test. I got my class 1 and was finally a real trucker.

Things were going well. I was making good money, and then Mackenzie and Feinmann were sold to Quadra Chemicals out of the east. With every purchase comes growing pains, and things change. The runs got slower, so I started looking. Jeff wasn’t overly happy at Truck All either. My Dad told us about a family friend who was hauling cars, making nothing but money. So Jeff and I sold our trucks together, bought a 1985 cab over Kenworth with a stinger car carrier, and ran it as a business team. What could possibly go wrong? Lol.

It was November of 1994 when Jeff and I started 4H transport hauling cars. That old Kenworth had been ridden hard and put away wet. It kept breaking down; we would fix it, and it would break down again. To top it off, the contractor wasn’t paying us, and when he did, the cheques bounced. Approximately six months later, we had big debt and no money coming in, so we decided to go on our own. There wasn’t enough revenue for one truck, so we parked it. My brother went on to drive long haul with All Weather Windows, and I went on with Rainbow Transport.

After the truck sold, a position with All Weather Windows came up. Jeff was making decent money driving to Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, so in 1996 I started driving for them too. I drove a new 1996 Freightliner FLD120 with a 36” flat-top sleeper. I lived in that truck six days per week, driving from Edmonton to Vancouver via the Okanagan. My second load of the week would be to Prince George or Trail, BC, with multiple stops. It was go go go, but the money was amazing. I drove that truck for two years straight, and then All Weather decided they needed a fleet guy with lots of trucking experience. I took the desk job and a 50% cut in pay to be home every night, but juggling schedules and backhauls was hell. It was a big learning curve, and I was getting tired of management responsibilities, so in 1999, when an opportunity arose to drive a tanker truck, I took it. I didn’t have a lot of experience hauling resin. It sloshed around a bit, but that was all I knew.

I drove for Garry Jaeb Transport Inc. He had two trucks—a 1999 longnose Peterbilt and a 1995 Freightliner. Not long into that career, Garry sold the Freightliner and bought a new 2000 Peterbilt 379 long hood with a C15 cat, 18-speed big shack, and I found out what heaven really feels like. That was a great retirement job as it was 3-4 days per week, running two daily trips from Leduc to Drayton Valley or sometimes two trips to Grande Prairie weekly. We were the rail backup, so if a rail car didn’t go, we had to fill in from Dawson Creek and 100 Mile House, BC, with cleanouts in Kent, Washington. We hauled resin (glue) for OSB plants. Like everything, all good jobs must end so when the Drayton Valley plant shut down, there wasn’t enough work for both of us.

In 2003, I returned to All Weather Windows because I wanted to be a driver. Jeff was still there, and we started going to the Pro-Trucker Big Rig Weekends and Lesco shows. Many of you would have known my brother Jeff, who built some super cool Peterbilts, and between us, we won a few trophies.

In 2015, Jeff passed away from cancer. It ended the truck show era for us and left a gaping hole. Jeff’s Peterbilt sat in the yard, not moving a wheel. I sold it to a guy in BC and thus started the leased trucks for All Weather.

In 2018, I was also diagnosed with cancer. I have stage 3 mantle cell lymphoma but have not taken any treatment to date. My wife constantly reminds me that my cancer is lazy like me, as it is also slow-moving.

Jeff drove a pretty cool 99i, and I started driving an International 9400, which was pretty ugly, but after buying many parts from a Red Ram across the street – I made that truck look cool. I went from a Peterbilt to an ugly International, but that old truck was a workhorse with an N14 Cummins, an 18-speed, and 411 46s, hauling 5000 pounds of windows. It was a brute that pulled into the mountains with no issues. I drove that truck until they ordered two short hood Peterbilts. They were kinda cool and Peterbilts, so I didn’t care. I put 30,000 km on that truck when our fleet supervisor quit, leaving us with nobody. Management knew I had done it previously, so they approached me, but I wanted to be a driver. I declined initially and then told them I would do it in the interim, but this time, there would be no cut in pay. Reluctantly, they agreed. Thus, my management career restarted at All Weather Windows. The second go-around was different as I oversaw the entire fleet, buying and selling trucks and trailers, service, and sales vehicles, which grew exponentially. I continued that path as a supervisor/manager, still driving when needed.

At one point, we were a family of big wheels. My Mom, sisters, Sharon, and Wendy drove school buses, while Dad, Jeff, and I were truckers. My Dad greatly impacted my driving career and life by taking me in the truck all those years, and I have done the same with both of my girls. Jessica and Debra have spent endless hours in or working on the truck with me – after all, trucking is in their blood, too. I am proud to say that all 6 of my grandkids love trucks, too, and get such a kick out of climbing into Papa’s truck and pulling on the horn.

Jeff’s son, Braden, is a truck driver; with him, my Dad and I were looking for something to restore. One of the trucks we were interested in was one Jeff sold so we could go hauling cars. It was a 1977 Kenworth single axle that R&R Stress now owned in Nisku, but they weren’t interested in selling… yet…. Meanwhile, Braden found a black 1978 Kenworth sitting in a farmer’s field in Bonnyville. I immediately called the number and talked to the farmer, but he said the truck had just been sold to someone in the US. We were disappointed again. I called him back Monday morning, and he said the US deal had fallen through, and we could have it.

We picked up the truck several days later and discovered it was a 1978 W900 B model Kenworth with a silver 92 V8 Detroit with a 13-speed. Oh, the sound of that two stroke I originally learned to drive on was so cool. The truck was an old black Kenworth and started the transformation into a Smokey and the Bandit truck. That was a 5-year project that culminated in winning the vintage class at the Lesco truck show in 2022 and got me into the 2023 WOW Trucks calendar. That was quite an honor, considering that it was something I dug out of a farmer’s field. Without Braden and Dad, I wouldn’t have been able to make the truck what it was. After getting my picture on the calendar, my Dad took a calendar to R&R Stress. When they saw the black Kenworth’s transformation, he said it was time we had the blue Kenworth. Having only one spot in the shop, we sold the black Kenworth to make room for Jeff’s old Kenworth, which we are currently working on.

The last twenty years at All Weather Windows have been great, but no job is stress-free. During that time, I got divorced and re-married to the love of my life, the safety chick from All Weather Windows, now the safety manager at Stahl Peterbilt. Things come full circle.

After much discussion with my wife, I decided to semi-retire from All Weather Windows after 26 years. I am now helping my son-in-law and daughter on their farm driving another old retired All Weather Windows unit, a 2007 379 L Peterbilt with a cat motor hauling grains and canola with a super B – man, that’s a lot of weight. I am not sure what my next act looks like. I could be driving. I could be an owner-operator, but I’m pretty sure it will be behind the wheel.