The following is a story written by one of our consultants, who was a driver back in the ’80s. We thought it was a great story and that it contains information about some equipment that, even today—some 40 years later—most people don’t even know exists.

One December afternoon back in the mid-1980s, I pulled out of Chicago, IL in an older Kenworth cabover that had seen better days. It was somewhere around 15 degrees below zero, with light snow just blowing across the highway. At that temperature, the heater/defroster wouldn’t even keep the windshield clear or keep me anywhere close to warm, so I eventually ended up breaking out my winter kit and putting on my snowmobile suit, boots, hat, and gloves just to stay warm enough to keep going. My fuel was thickening up due to the temperature, so I was lucky to get 40–45 MPH out of the old KW. I ended up steering with one hand and using an ice scraper with the other to keep the inside of the windshield as clear as possible. I stopped at the next available truck stop to get some fuel additive for the gelling fuel. That helped me get back up to speed and kept me going.

Shortly after 1 a.m., on a very cold and lightly snowing night, I pulled into downtown Toronto and found a payphone to call my contact. He gave me instructions on how to get to the delivery location and told me there would be very little traffic due to the weather and the time of night. The street I took a right turn onto was a one-way street, so he told me to stay close to the curb on my left, then swing wide, pull up to the large door marked LOADING DOCK, and blow my horn. He said they’d hear me through the speaker and would open the door.

I sheepishly asked, “Excuse me, but don’t I have to back in through that door?”

He said, “Normally I’d say yes, but it’s just too darned cold and snowy to mess with that. Just go ahead and pull head-on in.”

At that point I’d already had a heck of a day with the weather, no heat, gelling fuel, and everything else, so I thought, “So what the heck am I getting into now?” But I did as he instructed. I pulled up to the door, blew my horn, and the door opened just as he said. My contact met me at the door and guided me in. Turns out, I was pulling into a freight elevator that could accommodate trucks my size and larger. He got a good laugh at my expense and said he did the same thing to all the non-regular drivers.

He then had the elevator go a few floors below street level (I don’t remember how many). Once the elevator stopped, he opened the door in front of my truck and guided me straight out of the elevator and onto a large turntable, which turned and positioned me so I could just back straight into the loading dock he wanted me at. I was amazed—I had never seen anything like this before.

We unloaded my trailer and staged the goods in the receiving area. That was where my job ended. If I remember right, it was about 3 a.m. at this point. He asked if I was hungry (I was), so he took me out into underground Toronto and gave me a little tour of the city you don’t see at street level. It was a five- or six-block walk to the 24-hour restaurant he wanted to go to, and at that time I had no idea how far and wide this underground city spanned.

We had breakfast, walked back to his building, signed the paperwork, and then I pulled out of the dock onto the turntable. From there I pulled head-on into another elevator, which took me back to street level—and back into the real world of cold and snow, and another day of life on the road.

I don’t remember the name or address of this building, so I was unable to find a video of what I experienced that night. However, I did find a couple of videos of a similar setup at the Barclays Center in New York, which we’ll link to this story.