NH3 And Seeding Season

After the ice North haul season had come to an end i spent two or three weeks back on hoppers topping up salt sheds around Calgary, and at that time they were still getting a fair amount of snow all be it the wet stuff, i was then asked if i wanted to go onto NH3 [anhydrous ammonia] [basically 82% nitrogen] when the season started in late April, and of course i said yes .

NH3 is a fertilizer that is put into the ground when the farmers are seeding ,it is transported and stored as a liquid and turns into a gas when not under pressure, it then will attach its self to any moisture and hold it in the ground

But first i needed to attend the training course that everybody has to attend each year it was a full days course and also took in a fatigue management course as this year we were going to be on a special permit which allowed us to drive for 12 and a half days insted of the normal 7 days or 70 hours this was only for NH3 drivers and had been requested by the Canadian fertilizer industry as the farmers needed this product 24/7

The course was good showing us how the tanks worked and how we loaded and unloaded this product it told us Wat would happen if we did not use our safety equipment and yes you would be dead it draws all the moisture out of anything , your skin your eyes ,they showed us a video of a steak which was freeze dried by spraying it with NH3 because when it turns from a liquid to a gas it is at -35 , and 1 liter of NH3 will absorb 850 liters of water nice product

But that's why we were trained and as long as you follow the instructions, and do things in order then we should be OK.

we then had a few days out on the road with trainers in the field this was good and showed us how to handle the pipes and valves on trailers and delivery tanks

Below is my set of B train trailers i put 14000kg in the lead trailer and 13000 in the rear [pup] and with that i would weigh approx 53600kg i could not put in my max due to being overweight on the bridge set of axles

Below are from right to left

orange liquid then the white pipe is the spray fill going to the yellow fill valve, next is the vapor yellow and finally the product pump driven from the truck in this case a jack shaft[pto]

the black pipe is the liquid pipe from the pup directly into the pump

unloading at Wakaw sk




below is a typical set up a farmer would use,
a very big tractor followed by the seed hopper which uses air to blow the seed down pipes to the cultivator followed by the NH3 trailer which also releases its gas into the ground via pipes also on the cultivator a one pass job

And Finally

RTLs workshop of which i saw to much

My first load with a step deck ,its a peterbuilt with a cummins on disc brakes all round and a air ride front Axel it was full of computers and had been on the ice road doing winter testing for paccar



a load of ducting for the Ekati mine as both the Ekati and the Diavik mines are moving from open cast [surface mining]
to underground mining

Me just outside Enterprise NWT

And my last load an empty box back to Edmonton

cant wait to get a trim and haircut

Back in my old truck again

After my last trip up to the mines i had swapped back into my normal truck which had sat in YK for over a week since it was trailered down from the mine and yes a glutton for punishment i had now come back up the ice road to the EKATI Diamond mine ,just a few km further up the ice road and this was my first view of the mine

The huge prill store at the Ekati mine

it can hold two years worth of prill for the mine

At all the mines the food is available for you and you can make pack ups and and the list of food that is available is huge





I wonder how much the rocks in this truck are worth
they process 800 tons an hour here at Ekati and get around 4 liters of diamonds a day







and it even has its own airport ,they all do its the only way to get here in the summer and the shiftys change every two weeks

Night Time in RTLs Yard On The Lake

Most transport company yards are concrete asphalt or dirt

but no RTLs yard is a lake

some more Northern light pictures taken from the lake

Back In YK

After arriving back in YK i spent one night in the camp hostel before i was given another truck

an old MACK but it was clean and tidy the guy who had it before had gone back home to Newfoundland.

i collected another set of trailers and headed south to Redwater for another load of Prill

Once back in YK i was given a departcher time and i headed back up to the mines, on this trip i saw the northern lights for the first time and sorry but no pictures can do them justice as to how they looked ,everybody in the convoy was having a really good light show

Chris on his way back to YK

Bob in his gold truck heading south too

These Ravens where one of the things i really wanted to see, they fly in the warm air by your truck looking for food [ look at him looking in the truck for a scrap or two]

feed the wild life its a instant ban from the ice road

This is the road surface on prosperous lake i took this as i was driving along it was dark and i used a flash see how deep the cracks go

Heading Back To Yellowknife

I headed back to YK with one of RTLs drivers Todd , which gave me time to take lots of pictures and as you can see we had had a lot of snow about 5 feet on Mc Kay lake which all had to be cleared before they would let us go

typical plow truck on the ice road

Heavy haul heading north
watt they call a rock box

If it looks cold it is

some great sunsets up there

Ice Road the Day After The Night From Hell

Well i am not sure how to start this next section but here goes, all was going good ,going up the Ingram Trail with two Newfoundlanders working out here with Westcan we arrived at the meadows and waited for our departcher time, this is the last or the first which ever way you look at it, security check point, from here we head out across the lakes and portages heading for Lockheart camp where we planned to stop for a few hours

Chris was in the lead bob second and me trailing behind keeping one eye out for security pick ups, they like to catch you speeding on and off portages at 10kph as well as other things.

All was good for the next couple of hours going across land and lake and it started to get dark still no problem truck was running good to we then hit Gordon lake the first big frozen lake i had been on until somewhere in the middle of nowhere my transmission service light came on up came the fault light flashing on and it had stuck in gear too , now this has happen to me before so i know the drill.

I shouted the guys and told them i had no choice but to stop on the ice , turn all the power off so the computer re sets, it drops into neutral and off we go again and that if they saw my lights go out i had not gone through the ice . and if it didn't re set then i would be in the **** ,you have about 2 hours to get off or you will go through as the ice cracks all round until you just sink.

I stopped turned the engine off and jumped out and boy it was dark, pitch black , i turned the switch and all went out waited Watt seemed hours before i flicked it back on and heard the sound of the gearbox going back into neutral , jumped back in and started it up and drove off to catch the lads up,

All was for about the next hour and we were heading for charlies hill a steep ice covered slope but just before there a fault light came on again but this time it was my exhaust re gen light but again it was asking for a parked re gen and never had this truck asked for one of these and if you carry on it will shut the engine down[ its the exhaust filter full and needs burning out basically]

I was talking to the guys as i went up the hill and have it on video but cant get it to up load, but didn't realise they could not here me ,so we stopped at the top somewhere and sat for 15mins while it did its thing, off we went again heading for Lockheart about 2 hours away when again a fault light came on ******* ******* truck, oh well i can clear this when i get to Lockheart or so i thought.

so before i got to lockheart camp just as i was about half a mile from coming off the ice i noticed my lights dimming on the dash and headlights dim then they would all come back and then go off again **** SAKE, THIS ******* truck, and it was stuck in gear again too, but this time i knew something was wrong as it was only running on 5 then 4 as i pulled off the ice into the parking, all this time Chris and bob could not hear me either and i just got it out the way before it Finlay stopped , out of juice[battery]

Somewhere around charlies hill i had a tension pulley pack up which took both my fan and my alternator belts off.

so i got in touch with RTL they sent a service truck out to me with parts 7 hours later we swapped all the bits new pulleys belts alternator, un froze the truck with a big heater and the battery's it fired up and i could head off to the mine .

Chris and Bob had left so i tagged on with another group

what a first trip and its only half way up to the mine

deep joy

THE ROAD

We got to the mine late in the day after a long trip up mc kay lake nearly 6 hours as the weather was closing in with a storm[ un be known to us the biggest storm in 5 years]

i tipped my prill and was parked up with all the other trucks and there we sat for 4 days while it blew snowed and was generally bad weather.

the picture below at points i could not see the back of the trailers

after the third day i had too refuel as did most of the other trucks as you run the engines 24 hours a day to stop them freezing up, on the third day my truck had sucked snow into the filter and packed up i had oil coming out the exhaust not good, and in the evening i just could not keep it running anymore so i left and went to the camp via the security trucks that ferried us around

The morning after the storm had left us



My first view of the Diavik diamond mine






i left the truck here for RTL and there service team to collect and ferry back to Yellowknife on a trailer, someone would collect the trailers before the ice melted and the road disappeared

The Ingram Trail 70 km of twists, hills, drop offs into lakes and very narrow

probably the worst road in canada oh and coverd in ice too

The Great mine just ontside Yellowknife

The Meadows the first check poiint before heading out onto the ice coverd lakes

Thin ICE or cracked ice and a 10kph speed limit