by Daniel Francis
Before the trucking industry rewed up, horses, oxen, mules, donkeys and stagecoaches ruled the road, and blacksmiths were the service stations of the day. Things changed in 1898 when the Robert Simpson Company of Toronto purchased the first motorized freight vehicle in Canada.
The battery-powered delivery truck could carry ninety kilograms and reach a top speed of twenty- two kilometres an hour. Trucking in British Columbia, by historian Daniel Francis, celebrates the acceleration of the trucking industry in this province over the past 100 years.
Loaded with never- before-published archival and contemporary photographs, Trucking in British Columbia is a unique celebration of the industry’s hundredth birthday.
Almost a decade after Toronto rolled out its first motorized truck, Vancouver jumped on the bandwagon. The city saw its first motorized delivery van in about 1907 when James Stark, owner of a dry goods store on Cordova Street, got behind the wheel. Soon, the city was host to Canada’s first motorized fire fighting equipment. As trucking expanded across the province, legends of the road emerged.
One of these legends was Walter “Cog” Harrington who rescued countless trucks and buses along the canyon route in the mid-1930s. Cog must have appeared a pirate of the road when he’d pull up to disabled vehicles in his snub-nosed Ford tow truck with a patch over his eye (it was injured when a cable snapped during one of his highway rescues).
Since those early years, trucking in BC has not slowed down. It didn’t take long for trucks to become a vital part of the provincial economy.
Trucking quickly expanded into a vibrant industry, becoming an essential link in the operations of other industries-perhaps no more so than in the forest industry. Today, trucking is among BC’s five largest industries. From its hazardous infancy to its exciting innovations for the future, Trucking in British Columbia illustrates the life of an industry, and marks an important anniversary in the history of the province. In researching the content of this book, Daniel Francis made an all-night run up to Prince George with a trucker, scoured through numerous documents and interviewed many people in the industry, including members of the BC Trucking Association, government organizations, mechanics and, of course, drivers.
A free copy of this book is available on a first-come-first-served basis at the Fort Nelson News #3 4448 50th Avenue West, Fort Nelson

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