For days, we’ve heard about the incoming storm on Christmas day. KX News from Minot, N.D. said they were tracking its origins all the way from the Gulf of Alaska. How they can do that and accurately predict what will happen, I’ll never know, but their own meteorologist said his prediction of up to 13 inches of snow was a guess. He was only off by an inch in Minot.
Estevan caught the edge of it. We got something like eight inches of snow. I feel sorry for southwest Manitoba, from what I saw monitoring the weather radar. They might dig out by April. Maybe May.
Knowing this big storm, our third this month, was coming, I drove my wife to work and would pick her up again. This way, the truck would not get snowed in at the hospital, and, let’s face it, I’m a bit of a better driver in snow than my wife. So, I got to score husband points.
I woke up early, blew the six to eight inches of snow off the driveway (and larger drifts), and even extended my efforts out into the street so I could turn while backing up.
“Should I clear enough to do a 90 degree turn?” I asked myself. “If I can’t get further than this, I’m not going anywhere, so I should be ok.”
Well, I got out of our driveway, and got stuck in the street, in 4x4 high.
Rocking back and forth, twisting the wheel this way and that, I got nowhere. This was when I realized “4x4 low” exists for a reason. I shifted gears and hoped really hard.
It worked spectacularly well. The truck dug down and took off. Ok, no stopping from here to the hospital, I told myself, blowing through the blown-in intersection with the four-way stop on the way.
The city had made a pass or two with a grader on some, but not all streets (they got to ours later). Without that, I wouldn’t have been going anywhere. Boxing Day shopping? Not this year, buddy.
It was clear if you were driving a car, you would not be driving. That applies to minivans, too. Most SUVs probably wouldn’t get very far either. I took the pickup, because I didn’t think my own, very large, SUV would fare very well without winter tires.
This reminded me of a conversation with our daughter, Katrina, a few days earlier. Pulling into Walmart, she noted almost everyone drives trucks in Estevan. I told her to count the trucks vs. cars in the parking lot. It confirmed her assertion.
I explained to Katrina that two years ago I did an edition of Pipeline News about pickup trucks. Nearly everyone in the oilpatch drives one. It turns out that of the six or so dealerships I spoke to in Estevan, Weyburn and Carlyle, almost all their sales are pickups. Roughly 80 to 90 per cent of their vehicles are pickups, almost every single one a 4x4 crew cab. Several dealerships bring in straight cab pickups on special order only, because no one will buy them otherwise. They sell only a handful a year. And two-wheel drive? What’s that?
It wasn’t always this way. At one point people drove cars, but that’s not the case in this area anymore. I don’t think the weather has dramatically changed. I think the realization that we, on the prairies, get really crappy weather, combined with the practicality of pickups, has conquered all. It doesn’t hurt that today’s pickup is pretty cushy compared to 30 years ago. People have voted with their wallets, and they voted for 4x4 pickups.
There was a time I drove cars. But I have seen the light. It’s called the clearance under the axles. Truck, yeah!
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
