By Ashley Wiebe

999,999 km and counting

Apr 2, 2017 | 1:25 PM

REDCLIFF, AB — Ross Murray isn’t surprised his Ford F-350 is still on the road, despite the odometer reading 999,999 kilometres.

Murray and his wife bought the truck, which they’ve named Black Beauty, brand new in 2005. It was meant to replace his last welding truck, which had more than 800,000 km.

“I work on the pipeline and I work for a crew out of Brooks, so everyday for many years I drove up to Brooks in the morning at 5:30 a.m. and then we’d drive to the job from there,” he said.

The Redcliff resident says his truck has driven its share of concrete, gravel and dirt roads, having been all over southern Alberta.

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It only has a few scratches and dings from rocks and other debris. There’s also a small crack he pointed out on the front end from the time he hit a deer.

The odometer stopped at 999,999 last week, but without a seventh digit, isn’t able to turn over to 1,000,000.

“Since then I noticed that when I open the door, it is actually starting to count from 0 again, but it doesn’t while it’s running. It just sticks at 999,999,” he said.

He’s kept up with the maintenance over the years and says that’s helped keep it on the road.

“I followed the Ford service manual to a T,” he said, adding that he kept up with his oil changes every 5,000 kilometres.

“Oil changes are the cheapest maintenance that you can have,” Murray added. “If you keep fresh oil in it and keep it running and keep on top of the maintenance, fresh air filters, fuel filters, they should run forever.”

And that’s how long Murray plans to keep driving it, saying he hasn’t even considered what his next vehicle will be.

“I’m starting to break down more than it is,” he said, laughing. “I just had a hip replacement last November so it’s been sitting a little longer than usual right now, but I’ll get back out. I just got cleared to go back to work so we’ll be putting her back out in the field here ASAP.”