Fifty years of trucking at 50-plus below: Alaska Trucking Association reaches historic milepost.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: ATA SPECIAL SECTION

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In the beginning, the roads just didn't connect--they went round and round inside the Alaska Territory's boundaries. Not until the Alaska-Canada Highway was built did Alaska see a real rise of the truck freighting that would herald a new era in transporting goods to this remote state and in transporting the resources the state produced.

And those big trucks were always a welcome sight to motorists who also braved the bare-bones road north to the Last Frontier.

With its slogan "If You Got It, A Truck Brought It," the Alaska Trucking Association (ATA) wheels in its half century of service to the state's economy this year.

SALUTING TRUCKERS' SPIRIT

"Those guys are the real pioneers," said Jimmy Doyle, vice president of Weaver Brothers Inc., of the truckers who opened up The Last Frontier.

Weaver Brothers is an Anchorage trucking firm established in Oregon in 1946. In 1955, it moved its main operations to Anchorage and has had terminals in North Kenai, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Valdez and Seattle since the mid-1970s.

A member of ATA's History Committee, Doyle has become the unofficial ATA historian and archivist, doing video interviews with retired truckers and accepting photo albums from retired truckers who wanted their pictures to reside in a safe place.

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The history of trucking in Alaska is one of enormous effort--and lots of sweat and swears.

In March 1949, Hanson W. Baldwin, a writer for the New York Times, reported "Transportation is the 'Achilles heel' of Alaska. It is conspicuous by its absence."

Certainly, in 1949, that was the case, but soon the trucks would roll.

IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS HOOFS AND PAWS

However, before roads and bridges, or any kind of real infrastructure, there was Sourdough Express in Fairbanks, which has provided dedicated service to the oil industry since the 1960s, but started long before that.

In 1898, Bob Ellis started the company in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, to haul supplies and equipment for Klondike Gold Rush miners--in the winter by dog sled and with horse-drawn wagons in summer. Four years later, Ellis moved what had become a trucking company to Fairbanks in 1923, where it has remained.

The Richardson Highway also had a gold rush start. Built in 1898 by the U.S. Army, it was an alternative route to the Klondike gold fields. A 409-mile pack trail from the port at Valdez to Eagle, after the rush, the Army kept the trail open as a corridor between its posts at Fort Liscum, in Valdez, and Fort Egbert, in Eagle. It was...