The Island

[tracer]

I've been looking at these loads to Newfoundland, Canada on the Landstar board and the rates are always pretty amazing. Okay, there's the ferry which costs around 600 bucks one way and then you have to drive on the island through all that fog to your destination... But how bad can it be if the trip pays over $3/mile? So, I drove 500 miles empty to IL, picked up some metal parts (no tarp is required), and am now heading back to my home in Ontario and then north-east via Quebec, New Brunswick and ... the trip stops at North Sydney, Nova Scotia where I'm catching the ferry to Port aux Basques, NL. The crossing time is around 6-8 hours and then it's 500 miles or 10 hour drive from the port of arrival to my destination near St. John's, NL. If someone drove there before, please share your horror stories I checked the weatherchannel.com and surprisingly the temperatures on the island are ABOVE freezing. I guess that's where all that famous fog comes from.. Will post some pictures after the trip.

[oneliner]

I hear the winds on that road can be very bad,many trucks have been blown over, but you might want to make sure you chain you truck and load down real good on the ferry! Check out how your boat ride might be. No freight would pay enough to get me on that boat.LOL
Have fun and enjoy the ride.


YouTube - Ferry in bad weather

[no_worries]

Dated a girl from there once...great seafood! Closest I ever made it with a load was PEI before the bridge; not quite the same.

[Roadhog]

They have goofy dogs there.

[Steel Horse Cowboy]

Sounds like fun to me

[bulldozerbert]

so, is there much freight coming back? or how far will you have to dead-head?

[Bigmon]

Or ferry head

[Roadhog]

Or ferry head

... they got allot of ferry's up there??

[GMAN]

A friend of mine took a load up there about a month ago. I could not believe the cost of the ferry. He enjoyed his trip. It payed very well. He told me that the other drivers were friendly and were very helpful. He runs Canada quite a bit. Rates are usually very good. Other than the potential bad weather it should be an interesting trip.

[tracer]

so, is there much freight coming back? or how far will you have to dead-head?

There is no freight from NL. I'd have to drive back empty 500 miles to get to the ferry. Then it's 8 hours to cross the ocean to Nova Scotia .... From there - realistically - I'd have to get to Quebec, ON to get something decent. Which is not exactly round the corner ... It's going to be lots of fun

[tracer]

Other than the potential bad weather it should be an interesting trip.

I have never been on a commercial ferry (or big ship) like that before. When I think about it, I see "Rock" in the movie "Walking Tall" when he is returning from his Army service back home. The opening sequence was shot on a huge ferry and the landscape around him was unbelievable. I am definitely going to take some snapshots with my cell phone I just checked the weather forecast and it shows for Monday, Dec-20 it's +5C and "Sunny". And +5C is ... 41F! It does rain there a lot, most of the time....

[GMAN]

It is quite a deadhead coming out. I believe my friend said that he managed to find something coming out that was ridiculously cheap, but he threw it on the truck to help on the extra fuel costs. I don't remember if he found something in Canada or had to come back to the U.S. to get the cheap load. Fuel is more expensive in Canada and I think that also had something to do with his decision. He thought that he was going to need to deadhead all the way to the U.S. border. I believe he would have had well over 1,000 miles of deadhead, had he not found something. Even though he did well with the run up, it really eats into your profit when you have that much deadhead on the other end. At least you will have good weather.

[skrissel]

I took a ferry to Martha's Vineyard this past summer to deliver nursery load. It was a fun trip. Hope you enjoy. Here are some pics of my trip. It was a tight squeeze on the way over in an enclosed ferry. They return trip was on the open ferry.

http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/f...view=slideshow

[allan5oh]

I don't think you know what you've gotten yourself into tracer. Expect to wait a day or two to get on the island and another day or two to get off. Are you paying the ferry fees? I think it was $650 each way. I went back in May. The ferry ride is about 6 hours. There's only a few truck stops on the whole island. I think only two out of four ferrys are in service right now. It's a huge disaster, that's why the loads are just piling up.

The only thing you'll find around there is peat moss in NB(Inkerman comes to mind). Even that is 1100 miles or so from St. Johns and doesn't pay worth a damn. Expect to deadhead at least 1500 miles.

Some of those boats really rock even in mild weather. The ride up was hell for me, in the can for hours. Take some gravol before you depart.

[Bigmon]

This time last year you were planning your trip to Florida. What a difference. Call the History channel and have them film it

[tracer]

I'm well on my way to the Island I parked the truck overnight at a truck stop some 15 minutes away from my home and then drove in my car to my apartment where I spent the night. Got back into the truck around 8 am and headed east through Toronto on 401. Traffic was relatively light thanks to the weekend and most 4-wheeler drivers were still half asleep. The weather deteriorated east of Toronto and for half an hour right before my planned stop at the Flying J in Napanee, ON (x. 579 off 401) the traffic crawled at about 45 miles per hour behind a snow plow. As I drove slowly in the hammer lane, I passed a car sitting next the median concrete divider and it was facing the traffic! Evidently this spinoff had just occurred as the woman sitting behind the wheel still had a stunned look on her face and both of her hands were clutched under her chin. She seemed okay and there was no evident damage to the car.

I finally reached the Flying J and topped up my both tanks. Prior to doing that I got a bottle of Lucas Upper Cylinder lubricant and put 1/3 of the bottle in the tanks. I don't care what everybody says about fuel additives - at least in my case this stuff works - I noticed on numerous ocassions that right after I put the Lucas lubricant/injector cleaner in my fuel, the truck starts pulling much better.

By the way, for those who complain about high diesel prices in USA: using my ComData card I bought 360.34 LITERS of diesel and it cost me ... $381.61 Cnd (same as US Dollars nowadays). 360.34 L equals 95.3 US gallons so the price I paid at the pump was ... $4 per gallon! Granted, 13% of that I do get back in form of a sales tax rebate (it's called HST and I file the return monthly). Plus roughly 50 cents per gallon is IFTA fuel tax, so after all these rebates and credits the price is kind of comparable to US, but still - what I"m concerned right now is how much money LEAVES my ComData card: that $600 ferry fee ONE WAY has me worried I might run out of money on my fuel card. No money on the card - no fuel, because for some reason Landstar chose to use DEBIT fuel cards which only work when they're loaded with money.

When you drive in Eastern Canada, it's important to plan your fuel purchases as diesel in Quebec is STILL more expensive than in Ontario. That's why I fueled up in Napanee and I now have 1,100 miles to North Sydney, Nova Scotia - the port from which my ferry will be leaving for the Island. I'll pass through Quebec, then New Brunswick, and will get both tanks full again somewhere in Nova Scotia.

Despite the extremely heavy load (almost 47,000 lbs), my calculations showed I did 6.6 MPG US since my last fuel up in Gary IN. One of reasons I achieved this I think is because I kept my cruise at 1300 RPM and 61 MPH almost the entire time from Chicago IL to here. I'll keep driving this slow because fuel is so expensive here and I'll have to drive 1,000 miles from the ferry port to my destination and back once I'm on the Island of Newfoundland. I can only imagine how much diesel costs there. If I can help it, I have no intention of buying diesel on the Island.

[tracer]

I don't think you know what you've gotten yourself into tracer. ...

This trip is paying $9,300 (incl. the fery fees). $500 of that is fuel rebate that goes 100% into my pocket. The rest is 72% to the truck. I deadheaded 500 mi to IL to pick it up and from there it's 1,800 mi to North Sydney, NS and then 500 miles on the island from the port to my destination. All in all, before I deliver the load, I'll do 500 + 1,800 + 500 or 2,800 miles. Then of course I'll have to drive another 500 miles back to the ferry. The nearest loads I found were in Troi Rivers, QC - 800 miles away from North Sydney, NS where the return ferry will dump my truck I still think it's a good deal financially.

[Roadhog]

Here's hoping you make out good.
Sure makes all those mundane trips...more mundane though.

I heard this time of the year, the icebergs bang and s-c-r-a-p-e all the way down the ferry.
Kinda like fingernails on a chalkboard.

[allan5oh]

The fuel in Nova Scotia is always the cheapest in the east, I always grab fuel at the PetroPass at Glenholme. Pretty sure you can use Comdata there. Do you have any Canadian cardlock cards? You might be able to make it round trip without getting any fuel on the island, Glenholme and back.

This trip is paying $9,300 (incl. the fery fees). $500 of that is fuel rebate that goes 100% into my pocket. The rest is 72% to the truck. I deadheaded 500 mi to IL to pick it up and from there it's 1,800 mi to North Sydney, NS and then 500 miles on the island from the port to my destination. All in all, before I deliver the load, I'll do 500 + 1,800 + 500 or 2,800 miles. Then of course I'll have to drive another 500 miles back to the ferry. The nearest loads I found were in Troi Rivers, QC - 800 miles away from North Sydney, NS where the return ferry will dump my truck I still think it's a good deal financially.

So it'll be 4100 miles altogether. So you get 73% of $8,800 but the ferry fees are paid for? Sounds like that's around $1.65 a mile. But you also have to consider how many days it's going to take you. If you cross during the day it'll kill your whole day, if you cross at night you'll be tired for a while because you won't be able to sleep on the boat. Sleeper berths are extra as well. Commercial berth is cheaper but is shared with another driver. I forget how much they are, $30 for commercial and $50 for your own I'm guessing. You can always sleep on the chairs lots of people do that.

I remember the buffet on the Vision is pretty good, although a little pricey. The Vision is a very nice boat. The Caribou however is a heap. I think it is going to be retired soon, I'm also sure those are the only two boats running.

You're in for some views, even Cape Breton Island is very nice.

[tracer]

The fuel in Nova Scotia is always the cheapest in the east.

The fuel I got in Napanee ON should last me till Nova Scotia and then I refuel and that's another 1100 - 1200 miles covered. I'll try the Petro place you mentioned. I only have ComData for fuel. Re: the ferry costs. The cost of tickets is included in $9,300. So I"ll pay out of my pocket at the port.