First cross-continent truck trip comes alive in new book

OTTAWA — Everybody involved in the truck business has been on at least one — A Trip that Never Should Have Worked, that is.

And here’s a little known historical fact.

The very first truck trip across North America, back in 1911, fell into the “never should have worked” category.

But work it did. And the trip has just been immortalized in words and pictures in a fascinating and entertaining new book called “A Grand Adventure,” by Ottawa-based journalist Ron Corbett.

Corbett has produced a gem of a read quite unlike any trucking history book you’ve ever seen. 

The story itself shines, but in Corbett’s hands, it sparkles. It’s dramatic. Easy reading. Lots of great dialogue. They ought to make a movie.

And the trip in question?

Canadian driver named George MacLean, from Campbell Bay, Que. was commissioned by the Saurer Motor Truck Company (later to become Mack Trucks) to prove to the world that a motorized truck could be more effective than the mule train, which is, actually, what trucks eventually replaced.

So off he went. From Denver to New York, carrying about eight tons; in a four-cylinder 37-hp flatbed that looked more like a covered wagon than a truck.

It was, in the words of author Corbett, a “quixotic journey,” an, “audacious trip that had so many difficulties lurking around the next bend or over the next hill that anyone with a feint heart would never have set forth.”

Corbett recounts this historic in the same way casual manner driver MacLean might have regaled his mates at the truck stop. Except truck stops hadn’t been invented yet.

But this Grand Adventure means trucking had.

It’s a must, for anybody who loves trucks, business history, or just plain good story telling.

(Available online for under 20 bucks at amazon.ca, chapters.indigo.ca, and gsph.com. It can also be picked up at select Chapters locations and at the Antrim, Ont., truck stop.)