Author(s): Daniel Francis

Automotive & Transport

Trucks are everywhere crowding the highways, lining up for the ferries, roaring down dusty logging roads and yet trucking is often left off the list when talk turns to British Columbias major industries. It shouldnt be, as this gorgeous new illustrated history celebrating the BC Trucking Associations 100th anniversary shows. With annual revenues of $1.88 billion and 60,000 employees, trucking is among BCs five largest industries. Accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished archival and contemporary photographs, award-winning historian Daniel Francis delivers a fascinating account of the last hundred years of trucking in BC. Beginning in Vancouver with James Starks first delivery van in 1907, motorised transport exploded in the province, soon traversing every dirt track, hauling logs on temporary plank roads and leading to a frenzy of experimentation and innovation from the failed Renard Road Train and early battery-operated vehicles to some truly impressive purpose-built trucks, many of them manufactured in BC.