Doug Luckhart started running to the Toronto stockyards with his dad when he was four or five years old, along with about 30 hogs loaded on the back of their 14-foot flat deck. Doug got to know the route so well that his father would often send him along with new drivers on Saturday mornings. “I’d go to sleep around Stratford and tell them to wake me up at Toronto airport,” he says from his home in Sebringville, Ont.

The Toronto stockyards have been closed since the early 80s, but Luckhart is still hauling swine, at least his drivers are. But now they’re pulling three-decker 48-foot possum-bellied trailers that can hold up to 240 hogs or 110 feeder calves, and the loads are usually going a lot farther – Valleyfield, Que. or Marshaltown, Iowa, for example. Occasionally, Luckhart Transport draws young milk cows across two borders into Mexico.

The livestock industry has undergone major structural changes in the last 20 years or so, and the transportation business has had to keep pace. Since the early 80s, no animals move by rail in Canada (largely because of the significant number of calves that were dying in transit on railroad sidings); cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry are almost exclusively shipped by truck. The trailer manufacturers responded by building bigger and better equipment: double dropdeck trailers with adjustable inner tires were introduced in the early 70s, allowing carriers to double or triple payloads. Air ride suspensions, commonplace on livestock wagons for the last 10 years, have decreased the array of injuries and stress that animals had endured on their way to market.

But at the same time, the distance from the farm to processor has greatly increased. Free Trade resulted in fewer and larger slaughterhouses, most of which are now located in the U.S.

“Our work takes us further from home all the time,” says Don Earle, owner of Earle’s Transfer in Treherne, Man. Over the past 10 years he’s watched the packing plants disappear from his province. But his three livestock trailers have been kept busy running to plants in Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, and pulling feeder calves back into Canada. Although half of his business is livestock, Earle supplements his transportation business by running two sets of grain-hauling, Super-B hopper trains, as well as a small, daily mixed freight operation to his region southwest of Winnipeg. However, Earle sees his business moving more towards livestock as the trend continues toward larger cattle barns and fewer plants.

The new logistics of meat production has had a pronounced effect in Ontario. Toronto and Kitchener once boasted flourishing stockyards attached to major packing plants. Today, only a few scattered, smaller killing houses remain in the province. To survive, provincial livestock carriers have had to concentrate on particular niches.

While Luckhart Transport of Perth, Ont. orients its livestock-only formula by supplying both southern and local markets with cattle and hogs, firms like Prouse Transport of Mt. Elgin, Ont. augment their repertoire by hauling freight. Prouse runs full loads in 20 dry vans along with four livestock trailers that continue to service the hog farmers of southern Oxford County. Ab Murray, owner of Ab Murray Transport of Lucknow, Ont. doesn’t draw freight, but he does have a few feed and grain trailers in his inventory. Like Prouse Transport, his possum bellies regularly run hops to packing plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Quebec. The runs are usually three days in length and usually no more than 12 hours one way.

Hyndman Transport, on the other side of Huron County, Ont. chooses to operate exclusively within Canada. It manages to combine one-way westbound dry freight with return livestock in the same trailer, many of which are 53-foot tridems. By utilizing a cable decking system, the middle floor can be dropped down to be level with a dock plate so that the trailer can be loaded with a forklift truck. Sliding plastic panels fit into slots in the side walls to provide a water-tight seal. After unloading, a driver can remove the panels, set up the middle deck, and pick up a load of Prairie yearlings bound for fattening on Ontario grasslands.

“The cheapest way to move a pound of beef is a 400-lb. calf,” says Hyndman fleet manager Randy Scott. Calves from B.C. or Alberta are usually fed and watered in Winnipeg or Thunder Bay, and given a 12-hour rest before continuing on to Ontario. “It’s the one business where the receiver is always glad to see you,” he says.

Only poultry haulers have been able to sustain themselves by remaining local. Chickens are particularly susceptible to heat and moisture, and have to be loaded and unloaded within a few hours. Thus, farms are usually located within a 150 km radius of plants. The industry standard is to stack 6,000-8,000 birds inside 600 crates on top of a 53-foot flatbed trailer equipped with a frame superstructure. A tarp on pulleys can then be pulled over the load, depending on the outside temperature.

Livestock transportation is a world away from inanimate cargo. Sudden turns or braking can cause the load to shift and could injure the animals. When loading, drivers must also take into account weather conditions, the condition of the livestock, and must often be able to estimate an animal’s weight to within 10 lb. Weight restrictions running the 48 states are a big headache to livestock haulers. A carrier that can haul a 58,000-lb. payload in Ontario has to cut back to 47,000 lb. when running south.

Needless to say, a farming background is an asset when applying for a job as a stock driver. “When I hire drivers for my trucks, I lean pretty heavily towards farm boys,” says Ab Murray. “Not that they’re any better drivers, but they’re not scared of the animals, and they handle them the way you’d want to handle them yourself.”

Doug Luckhart mentions two occasions in which drivers had to climb in the back of trailers to help cows deliver calves enroute. At other times, according to Luckhart, a driver might administer a shot of penicillin if a steer comes down with “shipping fever” during a long trip. Says Hyndman’s Randy Scott, “It’s a matter of prestige to see them come bouncing out of the truck in good shape.”

Humane animal transportation in Canada is the concern of Dr. Gord Doonan of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. His inspectors respond to complaints, conduct inspections at West Hawk Lake, Man. (the main checkpoint on the TransCanada, where east- and west-bound livestock carriers are required to sign in), and “we have also begun to conduct inspections at livestock auction markets and unannounced roadside blitzes in collaboration with police officers, provincial ministry transport officers and provincial SPCA officers.”

According to Doonan, only about six charges a year are laid under the Health of Animals Act, and those are in extreme cases – offenders who have repeatedly been warned and re-offended. Rather, the CFIA is moving to non-criminal means of enforcement called an Administrative Monetary Penalty system, and a series of educational initiatives in cooperation with marketing boards, insurance companies and trucking associations.

Although Doonan believes livestock cartage has improved greatly over the years, he thinks “there are some companies that show the need for significant change.” Most carriers follow recommended guidelines, but he points out that there is still work to be done around the issue of “downed” animals that are injured in transit and cannot stand. As well, he says, procedures still have to be refined involving the shipment of animals such as deer and elk, as well as young and pregnant animals.

Racehorse transportation lies at the other end of the spectrum from farm livestock. These are the limousines of the animal transportation world. “When I say we run 15-horse trailers, that doesn’t mean we have 15 horses in there,” says Jeff Doyle, of family-owned Doyle Horse Transport. “There might be six, or there might be just one multi-million dollar horse.”

The trailers are custom built in the company’s Dundas, Ont. shop. The skin
of the trailer is made of a polished mirror steel and the interior is elaborately outfitted. According to Jeff, son of owner Ron Doyle, the ride is incomparable to any other form of animal transit. “You can leave a cup of coffee on the bumper and it would still be there,” he says. “We leave buckets on the floor with water in them all the time. Except going to Long Island, N.Y. Nothing can withstand that road.”

Doyle estimates that 80 per cent of his fleet’s work involves racehorses. Spring is a busy time for the fleet of seven trailers and six straight trucks when a lot of horses are shipped to race in Florida. At other times they’re kept busy doing the work for the Ontario Jockey Club, as well as ferrying thoroughbreds around Eastern Canada, and throughout the mid- and eastern U.S. A typical run this time of year might involve a horse leaving Mohawk Raceway near Toronto on Friday for a race held the next day in Chicago, and then it’s back to Mohawk on Sunday.

Truck drivers in this field are highly dedicated. Doyle doubts that he would ever hire just any driver for the job. “He has to be able to load and unload them (the horses),” he says. “Usually it’s someone with horse experience who goes and gets their licence. It’s easier to make a horse handler into a trucker than it is to make a trucker into a horse handler.”

Exotic animal transportation is even more specialized. As curatorial assistant in charge of animal imports and exports, Eldon Smith thinks he has the most interesting job at the Metro Toronto Zoo. Although most of his animals travel by air, he has used trucks on numerous occasions. Smith has shipped two giraffes to Langley B.C., a rhino to Philadelphia, and a musk ox to Quebec over the road. The logistics of moving a rhinoceros (about 8,500 lb. with crate) are fairly complicated. Smith hired a 25-ton crane to lift the animal over several buildings and put it on a flatdeck. The year-old giraffes were shipped on a low-rider custom van.

“It’s getting more difficult to move animals around. There’s a lot of opposition. For me it’s really critical that a shipper does his job properly to alleviate any problems, injury or deaths in transit. Because, if you don’t, it’ll come back to haunt you.”

Smith’s main concerns are keeping the animals’ stress levels down and getting them to their destination as quickly as possible. The zoo workshop custom makes crates for each particular animal. By placing the container in the enclosure, the animal is allowed to get used to being in and around the container for several weeks prior to the move. “They get used to their own smell,” says Smith. “They’re fairly calm in there and they think of the crate as a safe area.”

Animal transportation is the bread and butter of the nearby zoo in Bowmanville, Ont. Director Michael Hackenberger estimates his elephants, lions, tigers, camels and zebra put on 50,000 miles a year traveling to film shoots in Canada and the US. The zoo’s three animal trailers have criss-crossed the continent, from San Diego, Ca., to St. John’s, Nfld, to Brownsville, Texas to the Yukon-Alaska border.

“Without the trained animal/film industry/television industry we’d be bankrupt,” says Hackenberger. “Looking after animals is like looking after kids. To do it well you need money. They (the animals) get to see the world, they’ve got jobs and they dig it – as opposed to putting them in a cage for the rest of their lives.”

Shipping elephants is particularly problematic. At 23 years of age, the zoo’s celebrity elephant, Angus, is already bigger and heavier than the original Jumbo. The Bowmanville pachyderm is 10 feet six inches at the shoulder and he weighs a whopping 13,000 lb.

“You need to fit the animal to the trailer,” says Hackenberger. To do so, he purchased a used Kentucky double drop trailer from a moving company and spent $100,000 refitting it. Because of the number of windows installed in the panels, the sidewalls were reinforced and cross-hatched with flat bar steel. Twin I-beams were run under the floor of the trailer and a living compartment (for people) was installed in the nose. Sealing the floor was important because elephant urine is particularly caustic. (Hackenberger found roof pitch on the galvanized seems worked the best.) Then the whole unit rides on a Neway air suspension.

With Angus and another large elephant on board, the tractor-trailer combination grosses in at 70,000 lb. “That’s not big weight for truckers,” says Hackenberger. “But you’ve got to remember that the elephants are moving.” Angus’ center of gravity is about eight feet off the ground and that could affect a truck’s stability. “Actually, I can take a ramp quicker than any other semi because my elephants lean into the corners. You can’t rely on that, though. They might be looking out the window and not paying attention.”

Hackenberger suggests that there are some serious problems with animal transportation in Canada, and that carriers better clean up their act before they’re legislated to do so. For one thing, he thinks keeping cattle in transit without water for 48 hours is too long. As well, he objects to near-term pregnant animals being shipped, and he thinks that some type of partitions in trailers should be developed so that animals don’t pile into each other at a sudden stop.

Hackenberger believes animal rights’ activists are already starting to target livestock transportation, and these groups can be particularly tenacious. “At the end of the day, you have to get there with healthy animals,” he says. “It’s very important, if you’re hauling animals, not to impact on the public at all. Everyone’s so twitchy nowadays.” n