The Home Page of El Camionero

Background

These days, I work at Åbo Akademi University as mathematics lecturer. I'm also associate professor with the Heat and Flow Engineering laboratory of Åbo Akademi University, where I formerly was working on inverse boundary estimation applications in the iron- and steelmaking industry.

As my family is very much associated with the trucking industry, I've come to try my hand at trucking over the years. Started in the eighties with vehicle and trailer maintenance and domestic linehaul. After obtaining my CDL+hazmat in 1990 I did some linehaul work within Scandinavia during my studies. Got tired of the worse than worst winter road conditions and snowchain juggling and decided to go for continental Europe. My first load along these lines was 24 tons of cheese from Toholampi (north Ostrobothnia) to Lons-le-Saunier, France (Jura district). I hadn't been south of Copenhagen before this (very exciting) trip. After that, I've carried some number of loads from Finland to the continent.
So far, I've trucked in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Czech, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, BeNeLux, England, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Nowadays I drive mainly in domestic linehaul in the south of Finland. My childhood role model was the international trucker and particularly the ones who were involved in the hard and adventurous traffic between Finland and the Middle-East. In those days, international trucking was a fairly well paid high-status profession. That's all gone now and so are the real long-haul routes, there was a stint a few years back, however, with Finnish trucks going all the way to Asia.

Interests:

My family, mathematics, international trucking, refrigerated road transport, skiing, country music (Tom T. Hall, Townes Van Zandt, Gene Watson, Chris Ledoux, Doug Supernaw, Merle Haggard, Moore & Napier etc.), classic trucks (like the ones below, which were used in the 60's and 70's in the linehaul operation of Karl Fredman between Vasa and Helsinki in Finland)

Articles in Finnish trucking and omnibus periodicals

Winter morning at the terminal in Vasa, a couple of rigs starting out on the line.

Busy day during the teamsters strike in the early seventies. The most important lines were handled with family effort only. Not much time to line up the rigs properly once they reached the terminal.

Same day as above.

Some links

A poet, storyteller, songwriter; Townes Van Zandt

THE SITE for the American Trucker