Our November 2006 Rig of the Month driver, Jas Johal, was born in New Westminster B.C. He lived in Queensborough until he was five years old and then moved to Burnaby where he lived until the age of nineteen. At that time he moved to Delta with his family where he met his future wife, Raman. Jas and Raman were married in October of 1991 and now live in Surrey B.C. with their two children, Christopher (age 11) and Jessica (age 5).

Jas’ father, Amar Johal, has owned and operated trucks for as long as Jas can remember and his dream has always been to follow in his father’s footsteps. At the age of fifteen, when most of his friends were playing hockey, Jas was driving his Dad’s truck around the yard.  At sixteen his job was to take the gravel trucks out to get washed and then bring them back and park them in the yard. 

This is his story:

My parents had great plans for me. The biggest one being that I get an education and then a job. Any job, that is, other than driving truck. To make them happy I started attending classes at Douglas College but I soon realized that it was not for me. Although it didn’t fit in with their plans, I already knew what I wanted to do and as soon as I turned nineteen I took my Class 1 at Burnaby Driving School.

My first official job was running team to California with Leo Sohi who had his truck leased with Pacific North West Carriers. We were pulling 48-foot dry-vans all through the states with a 1988 Freightliner. My dad’s trucks had 36-inch bunks so the 63-inch one in the Freightliner seemed huge to me.  That being said, it was also one of the roughest riding trucks I had ever been in.

I ran with Leo for about 10 months while he taught me the ins and outs of long hauling.  Learning from Leo was not an easy task. I had to be very observant and a quick study because Leo would drive for just a few hours and then hand the wheel over to me while he slept for most of the trip. That didn’t bother me though, because I was always eager to take over the wheel.

The only thing Leo wouldn’t teach me was how to back the truck up. I think he was afraid that if I learned how then I wouldn’t need to run team with him anymore and he would have to start working for a living. 

After a while doing all the driving started to wear a little thin and I remember one trip when we hauled a load of wire to Monrovia, California. I had been driving all day and half of the night when Leo woke up and decided he was going to take the truck in to unload. Leo usually made me stand outside and guide him in to the dock but I was really tired and more than a little mad so I told him not to wake me up for any reason.

I crawled in the bunk and was fast asleep when all of a sudden somebody started shaking me and ordering me out of the truck. Thinking it was Leo I told him to leave me alone. When he continued I opened my eyes and realized it was a police officer. He ordered me out of the truck but when I reached for my pants he wouldn’t let me put them on. He just said, “Get out – NOW!”

He asked us what we were doing in the area. We told him we had a load to deliver and tried to show him our paper work so he could see the address but he wouldn’t listen. He kept insisting that we were there to buy drugs.  It was the middle of the night and there I was in my underwear and runners and the cop had me looking up Leo’s nose, while he was wondering why Leo didn’t have hair in one nostril! He finally let us go but it took a while before I could see the humour in the situation. Leo never did drugs and as far as I know he never shifted gears with his nose so his focally challenged nostril was never a problem that I was aware of.

Finally Leo made the mistake of sending me on a trip with his brother Billy. We hauled a reefer to Oxanard, California where Billy told me to, “Back the truck in, don’t hit anything and come get us when the trailer touches the dock.”  That was my entire lesson on backing up a trailer. So basically I had to learn that pretty quick as well. (If you call 45 minutes pretty quick…)

Shortly after, my trial by fire backing up episode, I took on my first solo trip. It was in 1989 Peterbilt long hood that belonged to a friend. I was hauling a reefer to Fresno, California where I unloaded and then deadheaded to Coachilla, California  to pick up a load of carrots. Everything went fairly smooth if you don’t count my damaging the reefer door, which opened up while I was making a U-turn and then there was the minor inconvenience or running out of money… Needless to say, I learned a lot on that trip.

My first official job running solo was driving a 1987 Peterbilt 359 long hood for Sohi Brothers. I started out hauling reefer because the dry-van division was running all 48 states and the reefers only ran the 13 western states.

The ‘87 had a 425 Cat with a 15-speed transmission with a Jake break and brake saver. Of all the trucks that I have driven and owned this was my favourite. I just liked the way it was setup. This was a stark contrast to the worse truck I ever drove which was a 1985 Western Star Cab-over. We called it the Purple People Eater and it was just plain worn out. It didn’t have air conditioning and half the time the Jakes didn’t want to work. Nobody wanted to drive it but somehow I always ended up with it.

I drove gravel truck for a while but there was always that pull to go back on the highway. It was not long after I did go back that I met my wife Raman. This posed a real problem because now I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could, so I compromised and ended up on a Portland run hauling scrap paper in an open top trailer. I’d pick up a loaded trailer in North Vancouver between 7 and 8 pm, run to Portland, unload and have the trailer back and spotted by 10:30 the following morning. It was a rough run and I was only able to handle it for about 7 months before I was burnt out. 

I ran spare for a while finally ending up at Cloverdale fuels where I did everything from driving a ten unit sawdust truck to pulling a 53 foot trailer hauling sawdust to Bellingham, Washington. Then I drove their T600 Kenworth gravel truck with a four-axle transfer on a contract hauling back and forth to Taylor, B.C. When that job ended I came back driving in-town for Cloverdale and finally decided to get my own truck.

In 1992 I bought a 1990 Peterbilt long hood and Dad and I re-opened Amar Trucking Ltd. We hot-seated the truck for two and a half years pulling a forty-six and a half foot reefer to California.
In time, as things started getting busier, I bought my first brand new truck. It was a fully loaded 1995 Peterbilt 379 with a sixty-three inch standup bunk and was the beginning of my, “clean,” obsession. For seven years I polished it every three weeks and vacuumed it every night before going to bed. I kept it so clean that you would be hard pressed to find a single water spot on it and of course no one was allowed in it with shoes on.

This became a problem when I took my wife with me on the trucks second trip to California and Canada Customs decided that they wanted to search the truck. I didn’t have a problem with that but I explained to the officers that it was a brand new truck and since it was wet out…if they could please remove their shoes…  One officer agreed and the other refused, so I refused to let them in the truck - completely oblivious to the fact that they could legally enter without my permission. 

They took me back to the Long Room where my wife sat patiently waiting, thinking that we were going to head home any time now. After sitting there for about 45 minutes, talking with the supervisor, and getting a little elbow nudge from my wife, I finally let the customs officers in my truck with their shoes on. It was about this time that my family realized that the truck was my new infatuation and there was no stopping me.

I drove that truck for seven years until I decided to open a sister company with my father named J & A Transport at which time I sold the ’95 and bought a 2002 Pete.

I was coming out of California into Oregon on the first trip in the new truck when I was stopped just north of Yreka, California because of snow. Everybody was stopped single file waiting for a spot to chain up when a Swift driver decided to pass us. He hammered his brakes on just as he was coming by my truck and his trailer slid over and luckily stopped just as it touched my mirror. 

On another trip I was driving south on I-5 just north of Dunsmuir when out of nowhere a deer jumped off a ledge above me and landed on the front corner of my truck. I pulled over thinking it wasn’t too bad but when I got out I saw that the headlight, air cleaner, mirror bracket, and the side of the bunk were all damaged.

I tied the headlight up the best I could with what I had and decided to get off the highway by pulling into the scales, which were only two miles away. When I got there they were closed but being an emergency I pulled in anyway. As soon as I got out of my truck one of the officers started yelling at me for coming into a closed scale.  He said I ran three red lights and had no reason to be there. I tried to explain what had happened but he didn’t want to listen and although he was off duty he tired to convince the other officer to give me a ticket. The other officer ignored him. He was an old-timer and understood my situation. He called in the California Highway Patrol and they helped me tie everything up and get on my way.

Two years later, fuel prices had gone up and work had slowed down but my payments stayed the same so I decided to sell the 2002 and buy the truck I now drive.  Life is much easier without payments.

My ‘97 Kenworth has a 525 Cummins 18 speed 390 gears. I painted it blue (my colour) the same as all my trucks. (Except for the first, which was brown.) This truck is a work in progress and my family and friends all know that if they want me they just have to drive by the yard and they’ll probably find me polishing it.

I entered my truck in the BC Big Rig Weekend Show and Shine and won the third place trophy for Sleeper Unit, second in Paint and first in Engine Compartment.

All in all things were going along fine until this years August long weekend when my son Chris and I and some friends went on a guy’s trip to Lake Cowichan. We did some boating and dirt biking and it was a great weekend until I returned and found out that my truck had been stolen.

The police found it about a week later but the interior had been completely stripped and much of my hard work was gone. I went to work on it and managed to have it redone just in time to go to the Alberta Big Rig Weekend in Calgary. In Calgary I won the second place trophy for Sleeper Unit and the first place trophy for Engine Compartment.

Over the years my wife Raman has been great putting up with my trucking obsession. Her total loving support, understanding and patience has made it possible for me to live my dream. All this time she has always kept the family running smoothly while I was on the road. This, as all truckers and their wives know, isn’t always easy with two growing children.

We all go through cycles in our lives and lately I’ve noticed that my priorities have been changing drastically. Over the last few months, while on the road, all I could think about was getting back home to be with my family. That’s a big change from when I first started driving and always felt restless when I was in town.

I don’t know how long this new phase will last but for now I’m happy to be home, working locally, and enjoying my family.

Written By: John White