Canadian cattle hauler and songwriter Mike Murchison
Trampled by a 1,500-pound steer just a couple weeks back, the 63-year-old bull hauler based in Coaldale was truly one hurtin’ Albertan. Concussed, with damage to his nose, shoulder and a leg that "doesn’t quite work right at the moment," about all the truckin’ troubadour could talk about during our Sunday chat was getting back in that Western Star under another load of cows. I caught up with Murchison between physical therapy sessions.
“My wife asked me if there wasn’t another type of trucking I might consider," he said. "But this is what I love. She gets it, though. She drove for fifteen years.”
Murchison's hopeful to be back at the helm of this Western Star in short order. All photos courtesy of Mike Murchison
Murchison, who sold his trucking company in the midst of the pandemic, returned to his OTR cowboy roots. In so doing, he found a new artistic lane with the recent release of the “Highway, Volume 1” record.
“I was running my own trucking company with two trucks and two reefers," he said, as noted in my story about Murchison back in late 2021. "With COVID there I kind of took a kick in the teeth. I decided after 23 years I was going to shut my business down."
The move took a lot off his shoulders, giving him time to concentrate on music. "I got back into hauling livestock, which I just absolutely love," at the same time, he said. "It helped with my writing. There’s something about being in that element of agriculture, being on the back roads, that gives you the headspace to remove a whole bunch of clutter." It's a familiar place for Murchison, who "grew up working on ranches. I like it a whole lot better than dealing with the grocery warehouses.
"It was hard selling my business, but sometimes you have to let go of something to grab onto something else."
You'll hear just what Murchison grabbed hold of in "Highway, Volume 1" -- to my ear it's the most actualized version of his sound to date. And after his recent mishap at the business end of a 1,500-pound steer, Murchison looks at some of his work in a new way.
“There’s times when my own songs and lyrics nurse me”, he said. “Like ‘One More Chance.’ I listen to that song differently now than I did before.”
First released as a single in 2022, it's on the new record, and this is one of the verses:
So high and mighty
No you can't catch us
Then a moment comes along
And drives us into the dust
A lesson learned
And a humbled heart
Win or lose
We all got to play our part
(Hear the song via this link.)
The incident with the steer for Murchison is now an eerie example of life imitating his own art.
Murchison said digital copies of "Highway, Volume 1" would be available soon. CDs can be ordered via this link.
He laid on the ground "in that silence that comes after something traumatic happens," he said, certainly scared in the moment. "Life is limited. We don’t always get that second chance that we want, so we’ve got to make the best of it.”
[Related: On the 'Freedom Convoy' protest, with Canadian owner-operator Mike Murchison]
If you're like this old gearjammer, I imagine it's difficult to fully understand why a 63-year-old man would rush right back into a type of trucking that nearly took his life. I needed more information, and Murchison told me this story:
'Love what you do? ... Get back at it' --Mike Murchison
I think I’ve always been a cowboy at heart. When I first moved up to Alberta from Nova Scotia I worked on a ranch for a while. I’ve always liked being in the ag sector. I don’t mind mud in the Spring [or] the cold wind in the Winter time. I always like working around animals. I absolutely love doing it. Yeah, it can be dangerous, but it’s a good way to make a living. You hold your shoulders back and your head high. You’re doing something worthwhile. I miss it like a fish out of water. I’m doing some physiotherapy on my right leg. I should be back at it in a couple weeks.
Down in Southern Alberta here, there’s a lot of feedlots and a lot of ranches. So we’ll haul out of the feedlots. Normally, we’ll take the full-weight slaughter cattle and we’ll take them down to one of three places. We’ll take them down to Pasco, Washington. We’ll take them down to Toppenish, Washington. Or we’ll take them down to Hiram, Utah, depending on who’s buying. There could be as many as thirty or forty [Canadian] trucks going to Washington on any given day. The U.S. is buying the cattle, because Canada provides 40% of the cattle that the United States uses. The tariffs are not on cattle. Someone clued the president in on that, ... which is a good thing.
The one thing that unites us all across the border is the music. When I’m trucking, I spend four and a half days a week in the United States. And nobody’s different. There’s a truck stop up in Ritzville, Washington, called Jake’s. It’s one of the old-style truck stops. You go in there and you sit down at the booth or the counter and talk to the waitress and so on. They’re in the same boat we are. Their taxes are too high. They’re trying to carve a living for their family, right? And they don’t have any animosity towards us Canadians coming down there because they understand the work that we’re doing. They understand the spin-off businesses for them. There's a lot of information on social media you’ve just got to take with a grain of salt.
The guys who drove the cattle by horse years and years ago, they were called "drovers." Some of us who drive truck, we don’t think of ourselves as truck drivers. We think of ourselves as drovers. We just ride a different kind of horse.
If you love what you do, why wouldn’t you want to get out there and get back at it?
Mike Murchison spoke to Overdrive Radio in 2022 during the Freedom Convoy events in Canada that year. Hear that episode below.
Read more in Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's "Faces of the Road" series of profiles and oral histories.
