“The music industry has a fixed schedule, the trucking industry does not,” Murdoch says. Murdoch once performed to an audience of 12,000 people at Ontario Place while at the same time juggling these performances with a successful truck driving career. At the same time, he was singing in various orchestras and playing the trombone. I don’t think my feet touched the ground the rest of the day.”īy the time he was 21, Murdoch was running long-haul for Eaton’s, delivering from southern Ontario to Manitoba through the US. “My first time (backing) was a spectacle to behold I managed to get it twisted all out of shape but I backed it in and I walked with my head held high that day. “Eventually they would let me maneuver them around the yard and back them into the docks,” Murdoch recalls.

When the over-the-road drivers would come into the warehouse yard to make a delivery, Murdoch would beg them to let him climb behind the wheel and learn to maneuver the tractor-trailers around the yard. Murdoch traces his trucking career back to his teens, when he worked for Eaton’s driving anything they’d allow him to. “Truck driving was always a part of my life,” he says, as was music. Murdoch said he’d find owner/operators to fill in for on weekends, and take on a long-haul job during the summers. This was not uncommon,” Murdoch recalls.Įven when he taught music at northern Ontario schools, a set of truck keys was never far away. “I would take a rig to a rehearsal, run in and do the rehearsal, leave and drive to Pittsburgh, unload and come back to Toronto, park outside the venue, rush in and do a concert and then go deliver my load. Murdoch, who has held a commercial driver’s licence for 63 years, having acquired one on his 16th birthday, has put in a complete career behind the wheel while also singing at some of the most revered venues around the world.Īsked recently if he thinks of himself as a truck driver who sings or an opera singer who drove truck, he quips simply “Yes.” The two careers were so intertwined it seems pointless to delineate one from the other.

For Edgar Murdoch, a retired professional driver, schoolteacher and opera singer – yes, you read that right – there was no such thing as an ordinary load.

Volvo commercial opera singer