A hard road to roll

ALISON BLACKDUCK

IQALUIT — It seems every Iqaluit resident is paying in time, money and sometimes their physical well-being for the city’s deteriorating roads.

Each of Iqaluit’s four taxi companies has suspended service at various times over the past week because the cost of fixing their cars exceeds the amount of money their drivers are making.

Some employees also say the jarring pressure of driving full-time is taking a serious toll on the backsides of Iqaluit’s 81 taxi drivers.

“I would say it costs between $12,000 and $15,000 a year to maintain my vehicle,” taxi driver Roger Dubé estimated last Friday afternoon while waiting for his vehicle to be serviced at the Nanook Polar Taxi garage. “But, right now with roads like they are, you can put $500 a week easy if your luck isn’t that bad.”

Dubé estimates that every day his car is off the road, he loses about $300 in income.

His lament is shared by fellow owner-operator Jean-Rock Coté.

“I worked two hours yesterday and I broke two stabilization bars, and the muffler came undone after two hours of work!” Coté says while watching Nanook’s resident mechanic, Donald Lavoie, service his car.

“Just for yesterday it’s going to cost me a couple hundred for sure, and if I go back on the road it’s a couple hundred more for an evening if I’m lucky,” Coté says.

“I can write [the repairs] off [as a business expense], but right now the expense is more than the income, so you work for nothing.”

All the damage makes Lavoie, the mechanic, shake his head in amazement.

Holding a car-spring seat-plate in his hands in preparation for repairing a vehicle, Lavoie says he’s never had to replace such a part in his 20 years of automotive experience.

“This part costs more than $100 and will take about four hours to install, making the total cost of the entire job between $500 and $600,” he says.

The damage is also affecting the drivers’ health, Dubé says.

“I’m lucky I’ve got a good back, but I can tell you it’s hard on somebody with a bad back,” he says. “Like last night, one guy says he had to sleep on the floor because he was losing his posture.”

All this mechanical work may seem like pay dirt for employees of Iqaluit’s automotive shops, but they’re directly affected by the situation too.

“The roads right now are atrocious. I don’t even like driving my car,” says Dave Boone, J&G Automotive’s service and parts manager. “I just ripped the exhaust off my vehicle this week, so I have to replace it when the roads get a bit better.”

One vehicle part that’s been particularly hard hit by the road conditions, Boone says, is the constant-velocity drive shaft, or CV shaft, which needs to be replaced in most vehicles every two to four years.

“The CV shafts are what makes the car go, because once you break one most front-wheel-drive cars won’t go,” he explained. “See, when the ice hits the boots [of the CV shaft], it rips the boots and then all the dirt and garbage goes inside … It takes the CVs out and if it’s really bad, it will bust them.

“Usually, the driver notices a bunch of clicking when they turn the corners and [when] the CV shaft goes, your wheel can fall off,” Boone says.

“During the second week of May, we replaced CV shafts in … about six vehicles,” he says. “Two vehicles needed both sides replaced, but others only needed one side.”

According to Boone, replacing the CV shaft costs customer between $200 each for smaller vehicles and more than $400 each for trucks.

And that’s not including the cost of hour-and-a-half of labour per side.

But there is one person who’s laughing, and that’s J&G employee Nathan Zukiwsky.

“My vehicle is a 1996 XT 225 dirt bike,” he laughed. “This is my glory… I’ve been driving that for about two months in the snow and everybody used to be looking at me and pointing. Now they’re all wishing they were me.”