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Trailer Blues

April 12th, 2010

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When my wife Lisa Calvi and I packed up my recently purchased 23-foot Haulmark car hauler in Vancouver, it was not with a restored 1966 Corvette Stingray or an old Austin Healey. No, my acquisition was full of mattresses, desks, filing cabinets and stuff one gathers when working and living offsite for six months.

The time had come to go home and the only thing between the end of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and our home in Halifax, Nova Scotia was about 7,000 kilometres of driving.

The trailer was purchased for the Olympic program and during our stay in Vancouver, the idea it should become a permanent part of our life became obvious to me. After all, who knows when a call might come with a request to move a car from somewhere to somewhere else? Hey, with all those Internet automotive sales surely the world needs someone like me with a state-of-the-art car hauler to solve their most pressing automotive transportation needs.

Think of the benefits. We’ll always be able to take a spare car with us. Not the environmental statement of the decade, but the choice will be there. With its flood lights, rubber floor and onboard winch, the car hauler will keep me occupied, a hobby. I don’t have a boat, ATV, snowmobile, hang glider or a Lear Jet so now I have a toy. A pet almost. Clean it. Take care of it. Load it and love it.

Towing a trailer is fun, too. No need to go racing because hauling a trailer, loafing a loaded one across the country or backing it into impossible places, is a downright rewarding driving experience. And let’s not forget the fellowship that will flourish when word gets out to those hopefuls selling vehicles on the Internet. A grassroots grassfire will obviously spread about my ability to haul cars around.

Imagine, sitting around detailing the detail kit when the phone rings and a lady from Musquodoboit Harbour wants her beloved Maserati Superleggera 3500 GT delivered to someone in Toledo, Ohio. Or what if I find a ‘49 Ford convertible that needs to get from Cleveland to Winnipeg, a Gull Wing Mercedes from there to Ottawa for a retired chiropractor and then a '69 Hemi ‘Cuda to a Dalhousie history professor in Halifax who bought it because his bad ass uncle had one when he was kid?

Great cars and folks but there are downsides to car hauler ownership, things I don’t like to think about such as, “Where am I going to park this trailer”?

It will NOT fit in our driveway. It’s as wide as a transport truck!

The financial side is a swallow, too. I have to buy a truck to pull it and a naughty case of Duramax Diesel fever has been steadily brewing. The fact I’ve driven a loaner GMC Sierra 2500 HD Duramax for the past 6 months doesn’t help.

Lisa and I had a relaxing trip across Canada taking our time staying in hot spots like Kamloops, Medicine Hat, Dryden, Marathon, Blind River and Cornwall. We stayed in Mom and Pop motels mostly because that’s where we could park the truck and trailer. Wag my life Haulmark car hauler!

Lisa drove most of the time, a critical element in my plan to gain full support for the truck-to-haul-trailer-around concept. She liked hauling and by the time we hit Montreal, she seemed onboard with my plan to add 44’ feet of contraption to our lives.

But on the last day, just before crossing into Nova Scotia, Lisa came clean.

“I’ve been trapped in this truck with you for 10 days and every time I start to drive, you start going on and on and on about this crazy idea to have a trailer and truck in our already vehicularly-complex existence.”

“Do you know how much you talk about this? Trucks. Trucks. Trailers. Trucks.”

I suspected my wife was hormonal.

“Look, Lisa. Do you know how much I agonized over purchasing my first photocopier? It took me forever. Then I wondered how I ever got along with out it. It will be the same with the trailer.”

With Lisa seemingly pacified by the time we got to Halifax, I was suffering from truck fever delirium: “I need this truck because I have this trailer.” “A trailer is nothing without a load so unless there is a load what’s the point in having one?”

It took two days to unload the trailer after I suffered the front lawn trying to jockey it off the street into the front part of our driveway.

“Where are you going to put it?” Lisa asked politely, after I had detailed the interior to look more like an operating room than a car haulin’ hovel.

I explained that Luke Thompson, who had helped out with our Fuel Cell vehicle service at the Olympics, offered to put the trailer in the driveway at his house in Mineville. His wife, Ann, and I have always gotten along, but there’s nothing like a car hauler in the driveway to wear things thin.

That evening I backed into Luke’s driveway and unhitched like a pro. I checked to see how much of the Haulmark was visible from the kitchen window. Not much thankfully. But the white behemoth is right there when you drive into the yard. Wham. Garry’s brainwave, in your face.

I thanked Luke and prepared to pull away. Free of the millstone, the Sierra HD would feel like a sports car.

“Now this isn’t forever. Eh?” Luke muttered, eyeing his new driveway parasite.

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