so local wages are no better than the uk■■? perhaps if you were on local in s england …but i recon i am on a fair bit more than back in Scotland.
Well i am in my own bed every night on local work in MB and 600mls or more 5days a week. paid by the hr work.
A few of my friends have driving jobs that get them home every night, they earn a reasonable wage for doing so. I’m not interested in that kind of work, never have been. I like the long haul stuff. Driving lorries is a hobby as well as my job, that’s not to say I’ll do it for nothing, far from it.
Not everyone wants to be home every night, the life of a driver in Canada may not suit you, that’s fine, it doesn’t make you any less of a man or less of a driver.
The reason you may find a little hostility in replies could be due to the way you come across, it sounds as if you think it is stupid to move to Canada and be a lorry driver. For you it may be, for others it is not, take that in to consideration.
As for the money, last year as a company driver I had 220 odd night’s out. Every day I worked involved a night out, except for the last day. I got home most weekends and I earned very well doing it. I had good jobs back in Britain and none of them compared with the job I had over here, not in working conditions and certainly not in wages.
However, if my main goal was to work a 10hr day and be hone every night, my very good job would’ve been a complete nightmare.
cliffystephens:
But if you listen to taffy he aint spouting you no [zb] …Been following him since he got there and he always says it like it is …Theres a few desperate looking sheep about here now though wonder what they are missing…
Thanks Cliffystephens but where’s the sheep
No matter where you live and work life will be what you make it. If you’re willing to work for your money instead of letting your colleagues carry the weight then it’s a great move. You get paid for what you work!!!
Face facts no one ever become a lorry driver to become rich. Dont matter if your in the uk canada or timbuctu.
my plan if i had stayed would have been to get a local job as I like home life. Canada is a nice place but you have to be there because you want to.
I’m not laughing at anyone doing long haul that’s for sure, I merely state that it would definitely not be job for me after I got my PR and I would be looking for a local, regional job where I could be home every night or be away for a couple of nights per week max.
If you guys enjoy doing long haul, and be away most nights, all power to you, what I only know is that I wouldn’t enjoy it, and as soon as I got my PR would be looking for a decent local job.
I think you NMM and Taffy are incredible lucky to be doing long haul and being home every weekend.
In fact you are the first people I’ve come across that are having such a nice set up, so far I’ve only seen post by guys that are on the road any day of the week, including weekends, they need to start at some strange hours, because the load needs to be delivered by a certain date and time that requires to live the yard at say 6 pm Sunday, or Saturday, drive for say 6-7 hours, stop to get some sleep, and then start again the next day, so that’s why I mentioned that long haul truckers have start time all over the place and it doesn’t matter if it’s weekend, public holiday, if they have to drive, they have to drive and the pay is always the same amount per mile.
I’ve also noticed it’s the norm that long haul drivers are away from home for more than 5 days per week, usually 7-10, or two weeks, sometimes more, I’ve come across drivers that are away for 3 months at a time, but these are mostly OOs so they do this because they make the choice by themselves.
For me, personally, I wouldn’t enjoy driving through prairies, for hours and hours not seeing anything for hours apart of flat grass land, this would bore me off, and when driving through mountains, yes views would be very nice but than being paid by the mile and having to go slowly would not make me a happy person.
If long haul was paid per hour, from the time I live the depot to the time I come back, I would consider this, but being paid by the mile, and having to pay myself with my spare time for all the time I’m not driving, while being on the road, due to bad winter conditions, having to chain up, inefficient and not giving a ■■■■ dispatchers, that would drive me nuts.
So, if I ever moved to Canada, it would be the case of doing my time in long haul, and as soon as I get my jail out card, otherwise known as permanent residency, I would be looking for an hourly paid trucking job.
Cant speak for every company but the place i worked was the total opposite of what you describe.
hou could pretty much do the job how you wanted i used to start my working day about 8am as i dont like getting up to early and work until about 8pm with an hour for lunch. I lost one day due to a road clousre due to the weather and never had to chain up.
The first year or 2 your seeing new things and places so its sort of a big adventure but for me long term a local job would be the aim.
No offence but you realy sound like you dont want to go to canada but rather you want a better life than you have in the UK.
If you have family problems in the UK moving to Canada or anywhere will make the problems a whole heap worse trust me.
Personaly where i was mileage pay or hourly pay wouldnt have made a difference but there wasnt much time spent sitting about waiting.
Just to clarify this once and for all, I do not have any problems in the UK, be it family, law, and any other problems of any shape or form.
What I’m looking for is better working conditions and better lifestyle than in the UK, working as a truck driver, that’s all there is to it.
I like to ask questions before I make an important move such as moving to Canada.
My opinions are solely based on over 1 year of research I’ve done on the subject, by watching daily vlogs on YT posted by drivers doing this type of job in Canada or the US.
I’m not trying to offend anyone, and if I did in any shape or form, I apologize, it wasn’t intentional, all I want is to find out as much as I can about the conditions of working across the pond.
Same as anywhere theres good jobs and theres bad jobs. Thing is if your coming as an imigrant your more than likley have to do a few bad jobs before you get a shot at good ones.
You can get a better house and car in canada than the uk as prices are lower especaly if you live in london but other than that your lifestyle is about the same.
The thing with moving out here under an LMO for a long haul driver is that you have to be a long haul driver.
Loblaws have trunking jobs, home most days, decent wages.
WestCan run regional, but I’ve heard a lot of bad things about them, not firsthand, just ■■■■■■■ and moaning on the internet.
Most long haul drivers, especially the Brits, hate running the prairies, but I enjoy it, a full shift with no traffic, no idiots cutting you up, just me, myself and I, perfect.
As for slow going in the mountains, a lot of firms pay extra to compensate, so it balances out.
Mileage pay is good as long as you’re rolling and on a good firm you will be, I would’ve had to earn a substantial hourly rate to beat what I pulled in at my last place. I got a lot of on top payments too, most months these would equal half of my mileage based earnings.
I used to be home most weekends after I started running Canada only, a quick 5day run out to the west coast and back allows that and the trailers I delivered always come up from the US over the weekend, it played a big part in my decision to run up here full time.
I do question my sanity in winter when I freezing my ■■■■ off and a mate rings me from Texas and he had his A/C running though 
I would have some other question, this time regarding a SIPP?
Has anyone of you tried to transfer your SIPP from UK provider to a Canadian provider?
Can it be done at all?
Are there any charges imposed on such transfers?
What’s the name of the Canadian scheme equivalent?
Thanks
As the journo said running the Prairies can be great you get upto the speed you want and stay there all day bar a couple of cities to go round you’re talking 1200-1300kms a day at 105kph 745 miles or so at 0.44cpm thank you very much that’s a great pay week.
Personally driving oversized a lot especially in the US where more restricted I like to start 30 mins before first light to get a full shift in before it gets dark. The different kind of goods you haul will also play part of a role in how you work. IE if it’s reefers then it’s mostly RDC work and yea you can expect to start at all hours of the day and night. With my work if I pull up outside a place at 6pm that’s me done till normally 8am or so. The hours of service work different so if in the US as long as you don’t go over your 70 hrs in 8 days you can carry rolling
Not just NMM &Taffy that had weekends of, when i was OTR i had Friday &Saturday off most weeks ,i was on LTL work on SKAB (up to 20 drops out ,10 back).
Most grain haulers are monday to friday…(another member on here).
The conclusion that I have arrived at is this, if you want to be happy over here you really need to research every aspect of it, real in depth research too.
Instead of asking us all what we have done, maybe the question you should ask is what we would do now having the benefit of hindsight.
That would be very useful information for anyone looking at making the move.
Of course we all think and do things a little differently, so it would still be a multiple choice deal, but still it would give newcomers the benefit of learning from our mistakes.
What you describe with the odd hours and the other nightmare working conditions are largely associated with reefer work and I wouldn’t advise anyone to come here for that type of thing unless they like being shafted on a weekly basis. Dry van work is another world and is much more laid back, so you almost always do a proper days drive, followed by a proper nights sleep. Shippers and receivers are usually happy to see you and get you tipped and loaded very quickly, all much different to reefer work where its very common to have to wait 5 hours in a yard to be put on a bay, then another 5 hours for them to tip you, then another few hours for paperwork and for the privilege of all that, you sometimes even have to pay them (lumper fee). The whole set up is a joke.
I seriously think you should forget all about Canada. The job here certainly isn’t for you and I very much doubt you’d have the will power to do something you’d no doubt hate, long enough to gain PR. As you say, the UK isn’t as bad as people make out, you’re not unhappy there so why put yourself through what you already know yourself is something you won’t like, for a potential life here later that won’t necessarily be any better than the one you already have. Different yes but that might be it.
As NMM and others have said, you should actually want to be here doing the job to make it work. I came here as a single 25 year old over five years ago because I loved trucking, I was doing European work but my options for furthering my experience doing that sort of work were very limited so decided that I had nothing to lose by giving Canada a go. I worked for a reefer company to start with and while I hated the working practices, I thoroughly loved the adventure but those working practices soon wore thin and as soon as I gained PR I moved on, within minutes of getting an email with my PR confirmation infact. As I say above, dry van work is a world of difference and I really enjoyed my subsequent jobs doing that, but as I came to settle down here, meet and marry a Canadian girl it was the being away from home that was the issue for me and that would be no different where in the world I lived if being down the road all the time in a truck was my occupation. My current job is almost always Monday to Friday and I often have a long weekend if I want it but as a result its shorter haul work down the US east coast and thats a hell hole of an area for traffic, congestion and ignorant canutes on the road and I don’t enjoy it a bit, but I can’t have it both ways. If I want to be home, I have to do shorter trips.
For what its worth. I think that if more people actually looked in to it properly before they came and asked objective questions about the whole thing like you’re doing, we might see fewer people who end up hating it and going back to the UK after having wasted thousands in getting themselves and their family over here in the first place. So hats off to you for that.
I’ve mentioned this before on another thread. I work long haul on bulk commodities, I usually start on a Monday and finish on the Friday (sometimes I finish on a Thursday and sometimes I start on a Sunday). I also get home the odd night during the week too. I only run the Dakota’s, SK and MB most of the time. So I’ve not got to see the mountains or oceans, just the so called emptiness of the prairies, but as others have posted, there’s no traffic to really contend with either. I get paid from the odometer (hub miles), when my wheels are turning I’m on $23 ph and normally sitting on cruise at 70mph.
Now I haven’t always been a truck driver (only 4 years to be honest), so I don’t have much experience to compare with back home in the UK, but what I will say, the reason I came to Canada was to find work and that’s it. It wasn’t for mountains, oceans or for anything else, but to work and this (when I compare to the minimum wage £6 ph jobs I had back home) has been a huge success. Coming to Canada takes a huge commitment and I believe you have to really want it, to make it work.
To be honest most of my problems with Canadian living stem from my Britishness.
I moan about the lack of things to do and the boring town I live in, but I’m still here and that’s because even though it isn’t my idea of the perfect place to live, it’s still a vast improvement on what I left behind. If my town offered all the things I want it would also have a lot of the things I definitely do not want, so there’s a compromise and that’s why I’m still here.
We are looking at moving to a new area in the future, but it will be to improve our lives, not to run away from here. Wherever we go will be a compromise again as we want somewhere with a bit more life, so it will be more expensive, there will be more traffic, more hustle and bustle and inevitably more crime, which are all things we came to Canada to get away from.
So when you take all that into consideration it’s not an easy decision to make. The area we are in is changing and getting closer to what we want, but is it going to change soon enough? Or do we need to adapt to our surroundings a bit more? That’s the difficult part.
The main problem is that unlike a lot of immigrants, we are not from a poor country, we had decent lives before we came here, we didn’t come from extreme poverty, famine, war etc, so we don’t wake up each day thankful for the vast improvements in our lives and this allows us to dwell on the bits we don’t like.
taffytrucker:
As the journo said running the Prairies can be great you get upto the speed you want and stay there all day bar a couple of cities to go round you’re talking 1200-1300kms a day at 105kph 745 miles or so at 0.44cpm thank you very much that’s a great pay week.Personally driving oversized a lot especially in the US where more restricted I like to start 30 mins before first light to get a full shift in before it gets dark. The different kind of goods you haul will also play part of a role in how you work. IE if it’s reefers then it’s mostly RDC work and yea you can expect to start at all hours of the day and night. With my work if I pull up outside a place at 6pm that’s me done till normally 8am or so. The hours of service work different so if in the US as long as you don’t go over your 70 hrs in 8 days you can carry rolling
Taff, 0.44 cpm is very optimistic for Canadian long haul, I’m not saying nobody earns that, but the big majority of companies pay between 0.36 - 0.40 cpm for Canada and a couple of cents more for US which then brings that wage down considerably.
The best long haul money I earned was running Calgary to Montreal and back but it’s still no substitute for hourly pay.
newmercman:
To be honest most of my problems with Canadian living stem from my Britishness.I moan about the lack of things to do and the boring town I live in, but I’m still here and that’s because even though it isn’t my idea of the perfect place to live, it’s still a vast improvement on what I left behind. If my town offered all the things I want it would also have a lot of the things I definitely do not want, so there’s a compromise and that’s why I’m still here.
We are looking at moving to a new area in the future, but it will be to improve our lives, not to run away from here. Wherever we go will be a compromise again as we want somewhere with a bit more life, so it will be more expensive, there will be more traffic, more hustle and bustle and inevitably more crime, which are all things we came to Canada to get away from.
So when you take all that into consideration it’s not an easy decision to make. The area we are in is changing and getting closer to what we want, but is it going to change soon
enough? Or do we need to adapt to our surroundings a bit more? That’s the difficult part.
The main problem is that unlike a lot of immigrants, we are not from a poor country, we had decent lives before we came here, we didn’t come from extreme poverty, famine, war etc, so we don’t wake up each day thankful for the vast improvements in our lives and this allows us to dwell on the bits we don’t like.[/quote
This is a pretty good aprasial yeah where you are mark is nice and a world away from down town sarf london which is good in some ways for the quiet life but is limited if you want a night down the pub or even stuff like cinemas or a nice meal somewhere a bit posh. If you move to winnipeg or calgary toronto etc you have easier access to the big city ammenities
but it does bring the downsides of big city life although probaly not to the extent of british big citys.
Nowheres percect its about finding the right balance