You already know I’ve driven. However, yes, it’s however. In the early 2000s, my boys and I ran trucks. No! Heavy Trucks. We had two GMCs and a Pete.
   A Pete? It’s a Peterbilt. A Peterbilt is a line of heavy trucks, along with GMCs, Kenworths, Whites, Hays, Volvos, Freightliners, Corn-binders, OK Internationals, etc.
   All our trucks had cats. No! Not an animal! Brand of engines. Cat engines are made by Caterpillar. 425 horse!
  No! Not animals! Ahhh! Size of engine, amount of pulling power they produce.
   The Pete?
   Yeah, she had over three million miles and still going.
   Year? 1980, a real gem.
   We ran Raw Hide Haulers.
   No! Not an American name.
   No! Not some fancy Holy-Wood, old western, “Hang ’em High, type name.
   Look! We name our businesses along the lines of what we do. It helps advertise. The name tells what we did or do OK!
   What?
  We hauled raw hides and skins. Thus, Raw Hide Haulers! Right! Hides! Ok! For you animal lovers. Let’s say what James says, “Wrappers!” It’s what wraps the animal so ya don’t see the insides. Does that make ya feel better?  Good!
  We hauled pig wrappers, cattle wrappers and some buffalo wrappers. Of course, they're different! Cattle and buffalo are known as bovines, they’ve hides. Go look It up! Not hides! Bovines!
   A pig has skin.
   Yes!! Like people. Ok!
   Cattle wrappers are about ten times heavier than pig wrappers.
   Because! Cattle are bigger than pigs.
   Hey! Go look at them!
   Yes! If ya wanna look ‘em up on the web. But ya don’t get the full benefit of size and smell until ya see them side by side.
   Buffalo wrappers are sometimes twice as heavy as beef wrappers.
   Because! Beef are thin-skinned. Like someone who keeps butting in! Ok!
   Ya, I’d say yours is thinner than a buffalo hide.
   Look! They’re different animals. Didn’t you take biology?
   How heavy?
  Beef or cattle hides, sorry, wrappers average about fifty to one hundred pounds each.
   Look! The bigger the cattle, the bigger the hide, the wrapper!
   Pig skin, Ahh! Wrapper averages about fourteen pounds each.
   Yes! Most pigs are about the same size when they lose their skins.
   Sorry! Wrappers.
   Some big bull buffalo hides are over one hundred and fifty pounds.

   Ya! Depends on how he lost it. The hide's lighter if the cape is taken for mounting the head. If not, then it’s heavier.
    A cape?
   No! It’s not something a person wears. It’s for taxidermizing. It’s the hide from the shoulders to the animal's front end.
   Hey! It includes the nose.
   What! What do ya mean! Taxidermizing! Yes! It’s a word. Can’t ya see it? It’s right in front of you! Ahh! It is what it is! Ok, new words appear sometimes!
  Yes! The nose! The nose is the extreme front end of an animal and is included with the cape.
   Where’d we haul!
  The GMCs ran from Harmattan to Innisfail, dropped an empty trailer, picked up the loaded trailer with beef and buffalo hides, and pulled them to Lethbridge. Dropped the hides at the XL processing plant, went around the corner to the Maple Leaf pig plant, dropped the empty trailer, picked up the loaded trailer with about thirteen hundred hot pig skins and ran to Three hills.
   What?
   Because there are three hills.
   Yes! Go count them. There’s three!
   Why there?
   Because that’s where the pig skin processing plant is.
   We’d unload the pig skins and head back to Harmattan.
   Total hides and skins we hauled?
   About one hundred and sixty thousand hides and skins.
   How long did it take to make the run?
   Anywhere from ten to eleven to fifteen hours a day.
  Depending on the pickup time, road conditions, small car drivers, weather, road conditions, small car drivers, hook-up, unloading, small car drivers, breakdowns, small car drivers, etc.
   Yes! No matter the weather, we made the run. Because the hides were hot.
   OK, here we go again.
   Hot hides!
   NO! They’re legal. Hot as being the temperature of the hides.
   It could be, but most stolen hides are cold.
   No! Not as being a cold case.
  No! It didn’t make much difference if it was freezing or not. In winter, the outside skins freeze to the trailer box, and the inside skins stay hot.
   Look! The skins have their own heat from the heat of the animal.
   Why!
  Because there’s so many removed so fast, they don’t have time to cool. And there’s very angry- hungry bacteria on them.
   Yes! They’re angry!
   Mad as wet hens. They’ll rot a skin within hours.
   No! Not the wet hens! The hungry-angry bacteria causes rotting.
   OK! To stop the rotting, the skins and hides are put into a salt bath to cool and cure them.
   What?
   It’s called blue tan.
   Yes! Blue tan.
   No! Not because they’re cold.
   Biology lesson 1,986!
   Generally, the inside colour of a hide or skin, yes wrappers, is a fleshy white, red, and grey colour, but once the hide’s processed and cured, it changes to a light bluey-grey colour, thus blue tan.
   Cured? It’s the start of tanning.
   Look! You must kill the hungry bacteria to stop them from destroying the hides and skins.
   No! The outside of the wrapper is the same colour as the animals’ hair.
  What? Go, look! Not all beef are the same colour. Pigs are whitey pink coloured, both on the inside and out. Sometimes with brown or black patches.
  Because! Pigs are like people. They like to dress up. Yes! I’m sure. We hauled thousands of them; we sometimes pulled them out of the trailer by hand and foot, one at a time.
   Because they're either frozen in or stuck.
   The Pete bobtailed,
  OK! Ok! Ran without a trailer from Harmattan to Ranchers Beef plant in Balzac.
  Then we’d run from Balzac to Lethbridge to the XL plant. Yes! The same place the GMs dumped, dump the load of hides, return the empty trailer to Ranchers Beef plant to be loaded the next day, then bobtail back to Harmattan.
   We’d pick up at Rancher Beef and Innisfail at about four PM. Hey, you can add!
   Go ahead! Four plus ten is about two to three am. Because we needed to fuel up and check the truck for the next day's run.
   It’s required by law.
   Yes! Most weeks, five runs, sometimes six, per tuck.
  We had the second sealed fifty-foot trailer at Ranchers Beef to haul paunch to a recycling location.
   Paunch? OK. Biology again!
   Paunch is the undigested stuff from the stomach of the beef.
   Hey! Before it’s made into a paunch, it smells sweet.
   What? You’ve never smelled green grass and fresh hay?
  When the paunch is new, it’s kinda smelly stuff. But when it’s been around a couple of weeks in a warm building, it’s really smelly stuff.
   Why a couple of weeks? Because they were starting up, it took time to get everything working. The trailer was to haul about fifty thousand pounds of load. The first load exceeded the legal weight by many, many, many pounds.
   We’d also hired a driver.
  Yes, my boys and I drove a truck until then, but we needed a driver due to university, etc. Ralph was hired. A good-natured chap with a balding head, a big smile and a large fluffy beard. Ralph didn’t much like butchers’ plants and said, “It’s gross stuff!” He ran the Pete from Ranchers beef for both the hides and paunch.
   The first load of paunch was a trial run. Ya know! To get the hang of things. I went along with a pick-up to ensure all went well and be there in case it didn’t. The day we hooked up, it was about forty-five degrees below F. The trailer was plum full. I mean full, running over full! Two weeks overdue full. And not just paunch. It was liquid, paunch, everything from inside the cows’ innards, plus extras. Lots of extras filled the trailer.
   We hooked up and slowly, and I mean slowly, moved the trailer out of the bay. We pulled the tarp over the animated mass and drove slowly off the lot. It was a very slow trip to the dump site as the paunch and stuff sloshed back and forth like a heaving sewage pit.
   When the truck stopped, it’d lunge forward. Then, as the paunch and stuff sloshed back, the trailer skidded backwards. Hey! I stayed quite far from the back of the trailer, hoping no one would pull in front of me.
   Ya! We made the dump site. Six large clamps were holding the tailgate in place.
   Now, the agreed load was to be paunch, a very semi-liquid stuff that didn’t or shouldn’t slosh.
   Hey! It’s hay, straw, and grain all munched up with some liquid to make it slack up. But what was in the trailer was not sitting, stacked up. It was alive and demanding release.
   As Ralph and I undid the bolts holding the clamps, holding the tailgate, holding the reeking stuff in, the tailgate began to bulge.
   The liquid began spewing out with the top side and bottom two clamps undone. Several brownie-yellow streams jetted up into the frigid air.
   As we began undoing the bottom side clamps, I realized how great the stinking torrent was.
   Ya! I yelled to Ralph, “Run! Ralph! Run!!!”
   Too Late!
   The bolt Ralph was undoing gave in to the immense pressure.
   There, yes, there was Ralph standing, covered, soaked to the hide wrapper. He was drenched with this putrid concoction of cow paunch, manure, urine and whatnot.
   What not?
   No! You really don’t want to know. OK.
   Hey! Go! Ask your mother!
   Half-digested straw, hay and grain were stuck in his beard. The brownie fluid ran down his shirt and pants and filled his boots.
   His hair was, ahh, let’s just say, slicked down.
   His glasses were frames of brownie muck.
  His hands and arms dangled from his shoulders as the reeking paunch trickled down his still body, creating ringlets in the passing flood. Once the putrid deluge surged past the trailer and truck, I ran over to Ralph, who’d not moved.
   He’d taken his glasses off, and a shiver shook his body as he looked at me with the most sickening look I’d ever seen. I thought he was going to upchuck his lunch. But somehow, he managed to ask, “Now what?”
   Through the misty cloud of paunch gasses and steam, I said. “Get into the truck and outa this freezing wind!”
   With Ralph in the truck, we finished unloading. Clearing the dump zone, I looked for a shower. Finding none, I sent Ralph back to Ranchers Beef for a shower.
   I raced into Airdrie and bought him a whole new outfit of clothing. I mean an entire new outfit, including a shirt, pants, shorts, socks, winter coat – everything.
   Once cleaned up with all the stale straw out of his beard, he smelled much better.
   Hide run! Yes! Paunch! No way!
   He said, “Ya know! Somethings I’ve done when trucking was bad, but that was really bad!”
   Ralph?
   Ya! He’s on the road again.