Check It Out: Saskatchewan farmer states the obvious

By Joan Janzen

A restaurant’s sign read, “Buy one Fish & Chips for the price of two and receive a second Fish & Chips absolutely Free!” It sounds like a deal, but it’s obviously not.

A Saskatchewan farmer who has been dubbed by some as the “new Captain Obvious” is none other than Quick Dick McDick. You may have watched some of his short and spicy video clips. He always provides a language warning if he gets riled up about something, and on a recent rant, he was definitely a little hot under the collar of his Quick Dick t-shirt.

“In the name of environmentalism, we have taken good old engines that used to get eight miles per gallon, and we have strapped a whole pile of stuff onto them,” Quick said. “We didn’t just put it on big trucks; we put it on tractors, and combines and everything that has a diesel engine.”

He managed to make the video during his busy harvest season, so it must have been a priority. He continued to explain that the additions have cordierite, silicon carbide and aluminum titanate, which makes them both heavy and valuable. Which is why thieves go to dealerships at night and “cut them off and sell them,” he explained.

“If you’re lucky enough to not have it stolen, the goal is to burn at over 1200 degrees F when it collects all the soot that comes out of the exhaust pipe. There’s nothing like burning something at 1200 degrees F out in the field!” Quick exclaimed.

Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) is injected into the exhaust stream of diesel vehicles. “Truck stops are filled with jugs full of urea and water, which is fertilizer, which they want us to use less of, but we’re going to save the environment by burning it with diesel engines,” he sarcastically quipped. “You know that manufacturing synthetic urea involves burning a whole lot of extra gas, right?”

He continued to explain that DEF freezes at -11 degrees C, which poses a problem in Canada, where the temperature dips below -11 for at least half of the year. “So now half the time it’s frozen, your DEF system doesn’t work, and we have to phone a mechanic that drives a diesel service truck to rescue us off the side of the road!” Quick said, waving his hands in the air.

“And if it all miraculously works, our trucks now get half the fuel economy they used to. So we’ve taken something that works and added expensive and heavy metals to it. We’ve created entire fleets that transport fertilizer that we burn. And we made it completely unreliable, so it doesn’t operate in the winter,” he said. “They’ve proven that when you try to make something better, you actually make it worse.”

What was especially telling about his rant was the fact that 80,000 people viewed it, and it was followed by 550 affirming comments. Farmers, truck drivers, mechanics and concerned Canadians gave Quick a thumbs up. It looks like the message by Saskatchewan’s Captain Obvious resonates with many Canadians.

A truck driver said DEF is the worst thing to happen in the industry in the nineteen years he’s been driving. Another trucker said pre-emission trucks had more power, were better on fuel and were more reliable. A third trucker said he goes through a lot of DEF, and the containers they come in are not recyclable.

A farmer said because their diesel machines sit for months at a time, the DEF will crystallize and completely ruin the system, costing thousands of dollars to replace. He continued to explain that diesel engines that run a DEF system don’t like idling, and the minute you start idling, you trigger a chain reaction of problems.

Another farmer noted his old truck got nine miles to the gallon and ran 285 days a year hauling grain, equipment and cattle. Now, his new model gets five miles per gallon and was in the shop 107 days last year for DEF related issues.

Mechanics posted their comments, too. One technician said he sees downtime due to DEF system failures, parts shortages, and misdiagnoses on the DEF systems, leading to severe supply chain disruptions. A diesel mechanic said 80 percent of failures are emission component-related.

Quick ended his rant by saying, “So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t jump for joy at government policies.”

And his viewers say, “Thanks for the straight-shooting. You nailed it!”