Big-name driver for hire

BRANTFORD, Ont. — And now, Harry Potter wants to drive truck. Go figure.

Your also might be surprised to learn that Harry Potter doesn’t live in Deathly Hallows, but actually calls Hamilton, Ont. home. And next week — a month after his name was on the lips of hundreds of millions of people around the world — Harry Potter will be going to his nearby Ministry of Transportation office to try his road test for his AZ (class 1) licence.

Harry has his air-brake endorsement. And he’s already heard all the flying-broom jokes. Now, it’s just a matter of passing the road test, and when that happens, Harry Potter will be off on another big adventure.

Harry — who was named after his late father (a GM assembly line worker) — loves engines (he still has his ’69 Chevelle hotrod), he has experience in shipping and receiving. He has no criminal record, a lily-white abstract and he has been a student at the Brantford-Ont.-based, Robar Centre for Transport Truck Training for the past couple of weeks.

He was originally interested in mobile-crane operation but now, he said, after getting comfortable behind the wheel, he finds the possibilities of over-the-road work bewitching.

“You know I haven’t done too much traveling and would like to see different places in Canada and the U.S.,” Potter, 36, told TodaysTrucking.com.

He’d be thrilled to work team. “I get along with people well,” he said.

An affable sort, Harry Potter is single and has no dependents. Plus he’s famous.

The fun began, he said, after the first Harry Potter movie came out.
“I found out that almost any 12-year-old kid can look up names in the phone book and make crank calls.” It didn’t bother him. “It died down after awhile,” he said.

Then, when the seventh and final book arrived with such fuss last weekend, Harry was even on the CTV national news. All because of his name.

And when the cameras were rolling, he wasn’t like a sorcerer caught in headlights: “People who saw me on TV said I did pretty well.”

Much to his delight, having the same name as the most famous fictional character in the world has a huge upside.

When he took his mom Margaret to the hospital last week for a check-up, all the nurses wanted a word or two with him. “As soon as they saw my name, they wanted to chat,” he says. “Same thing about the people at the driver’s license office. When I went in to do the written test, they heard Harry Potter was there they stopped what they were doing to talk about it.”

He passed. With flying colors.


Have your say


This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.

*