Im looking at making the move over but with the housing market being all doom and gloom here (Ireland) i cant sell my house without loosing my ■■■ on it. Im just wondering did anyone move over under the same circumstances? I can rent the house no problem but will only get about half the mortgage so will have to send home the balance each month. Has anyone any advice on the best way to send money home as there seems to be no way of electronically transfering money from a Canadian bank to a Uk or Irish one. I know that there are people who moved out for a period of time and sent there wages home to there families. Just wondering how ye did it. All advice appreciated. 
We didn’t cut our ties, and maybe that made it easier to pack it in, but be aware that as a Temporary Foreign Worker in Canada, YOU cannot guarantee that you will get PR, and YOU can’t control your income as a Long Haul trucker with any company, ie they don’t give you miles, you don’t earn a carrot.
Try search for and contact people on blogs, or facebook, who are still there as recent arrivals and ask their advice. The people on here mainly arrived in Canada a few years back when things were a little different, and much easier regarding obtaining residency, which now seems to be taking a lot longer and even spitting out some people for very small reasons, ie incomplete job history, from school to the present date.
Transfering money?
It was a pain in the arse for us, but with hindsight I would have sent my son my bank debit card and asked him to take money out of my Canadian account from a British cash machine.
Good luck.
Thanks Mick, thats a good idea about the bank card, never would have thought of it. Any tips for searching for blogs? Im not very computer savy. The blogs ive read, ive found through here or other forums. If i type in trucking blogs nothing seems to come up? Thanks for the advice Mick
There’s a list of trucking related blogs on the right side of this page… http://cathincanada.blogspot.com/ many of them are not being updated, but I left them on as there is some useful info on the old posts. Facebook is where the truth is, so you need to look around the blogs and then find their facebook pages or e-mail them to ask what their opinions are.
Facebook isn’t such a friendly place right now 
It is possible to earn enough over here so that you can send money back, but as you know only too well Mick, you could be finding that you need money to come from the other direction, knowing what I know now I would not come to Canada without a nice safety cushion to enable me to weather the storm 
newmercman:
Facebook isn’t such a friendly place right nowIt is possible to earn enough over here so that you can send money back, but as you know only too well Mick, you could be finding that you need money to come from the other direction, knowing what I know now I would not come to Canada without a nice safety cushion to enable me to weather the storm
We,ll have a bit of a safety cushion, wont be a fortune mind but should be able to leave 6 months worth of money for bills at home and bring a bit of cash with us. Was looking into wiring money home but it gets expensive. Micks idea of sending a card home to a relative seems like a good idea
I use Western Union to send money back, it’s a simple process, relatively cheap at $25 for 500quid and convienient as there are lots of places that both send and receive in both countries.
A six month safety net will be enough, but on top of that you would be wise to have an emergency fund, just in case you need to return for any reason, a bereavement for example, as sh it happens.
One thing I will advise is keeping hold of every cent you have unless you really need to spend it, when you first arrive everything is new and very different, some things are also very cheap compared to what you’re used to, it’s very easy to rush out and buy a car, house or even settle in a specific area, only to find that a year down the road you wished you bought a Charger instead of a Mustang, that you don’t need an 8 bedroom mansion with 40 acres, or that you don’t actually want to live in the area you bought the house in,
It’s easy to make mistakes, much easier than getting it right
kitbuilder123:
newmercman:
Facebook isn’t such a friendly place right nowIt is possible to earn enough over here so that you can send money back, but as you know only too well Mick, you could be finding that you need money to come from the other direction, knowing what I know now I would not come to Canada without a nice safety cushion to enable me to weather the storm
We,ll have a bit of a safety cushion, wont be a fortune mind but should be able to leave 6 months worth of money for bills at home and bring a bit of cash with us. Was looking into wiring money home but it gets expensive. Micks idea of sending a card home to a relative seems like a good idea
hi there,it is not simple to get 2 debit cards,so what i did was open a bank account,got a chequing account debit card and a savings account with a debit card,sent the savings account card back to europe,then use the chequing account as normal and then transfer funds to the saving account when needed,the savings account card will work in the ATM;s in europe as will the chequing account debit card,that way i only transfer enough funds to the savings card to cover what is needed,that way if the savings card went AWOL there is nothing in that account to be overdrawn and you and only you have full control of your chequing account,i found that the banks would not give 2 debit cards unless the other person was sat there and on the LMO.
you can also set up money transfer via the INTERAC email system,i have used this on only canadian to canadian accounts and it cost nothing how it would be to europe i do not know.
Thanks for all the info lads. Im going to need a fortune just to buy a drink for everyone thats helped me out lol
newmercman:
I use Western Union to send money back, it’s a simple process, relatively cheap at $25 for 500quid and convienient as there are lots of places that both send and receive in both countries.A six month safety net will be enough, but on top of that you would be wise to have an emergency fund, just in case you need to return for any reason, a bereavement for example, as sh it happens.
One thing I will advise is keeping hold of every cent you have unless you really need to spend it, when you first arrive everything is new and very different, some things are also very cheap compared to what you’re used to, it’s very easy to rush out and buy a car, house or even settle in a specific area, only to find that a year down the road you wished you bought a Charger instead of a Mustang, that you don’t need an 8 bedroom mansion with 40 acres, or that you don’t actually want to live in the area you bought the house in,
It’s easy to make mistakes, much easier than getting it right
I completely hear you newmercman. Ive been looking at car and house prices on the net and its easy to start dreaming alright. We have told ourselves that we wont be buying anything for a year, except maybe a cheap, and i mean cheap car! We dont know if Canada is for us. My wife has been while travelling but i never have. Its just something that for some reason has appealed to us for a couple of years now. A year seems to be our magic number. Tfw visas run out after a year so we are commited to giving it a year and see what happens. Hopefully we will fall in love with the place and apply for pr but if not then at least we wont have committed ourselves financially before committing ourselves personally. All we need now is a job!! Thanks for the reply 
At the risk of repeating myself and annoying people, like I give a toss, be prepared to start right at the bottom if you do find a job over here, there are lots of drivers in Canada, so anybody that has to recruit from overseas will be lacking in certain areas, each company will be different, but you can bet you will be mistreated in some way, for those who come over intending to stay there are choices here, you can put up with it until you get PR and move on, which I totally disagree with, or move on before you get PR and then apply.
In your case however, you’re more limited in your options, but you do still have them, I was on HRSDC when I came over, I managed to find a company who got an LMO (Labour Market Opinion, which basically says that they can’t fill the job with a Canadian or PR holder so you can get a work permit to be employed by them as a TFW) and I’m still with them, I’m very happy too, people need to take that into account when they form opinions about my continued assaults on BFS, I’ve never slagged off my current firm, not once, yet I’ve filled many pages on here with my rants about BFS and the rest 
anyway good luck, have you decided on whereabouts in this huge country you want to go yet?
Why don’t you try a housig agency to take care of the renting out ? I know a couple who came to the USA and never got proper work, they used an agency and sent some odd payments back but they were not much and rare. After 6 years of not being able to get full time work or even residency they returned and to their shock the martgage had been paid a year in advance. They had expected to find a repo order on their return.
I myself asked a person from across the street if she wanted to buy my house for cash and she agree’d there and then, 5 weeks later I was here.
newmercman:
At the risk of repeating myself and annoying people, like I give a toss, be prepared to start right at the bottom if you do find a job over here, there are lots of drivers in Canada, so anybody that has to recruit from overseas will be lacking in certain areas, each company will be different, but you can bet you will be mistreated in some way, for those who come over intending to stay there are choices here, you can put up with it until you get PR and move on, which I totally disagree with, or move on before you get PR and then apply.In your case however, you’re more limited in your options, but you do still have them, I was on HRSDC when I came over, I managed to find a company who got an LMO (Labour Market Opinion, which basically says that they can’t fill the job with a Canadian or PR holder so you can get a work permit to be employed by them as a TFW) and I’m still with them, I’m very happy too, people need to take that into account when they form opinions about my continued assaults on BFS, I’ve never slagged off my current firm, not once, yet I’ve filled many pages on here with my rants about BFS and the rest
Im under no illusions, i started at the bottom here and accept that i wil have to do the same wherever i go. My experience here doesnt carry accross the world or so it seems. Pity but never mind. As i have never been we dont know where we want to settle. Hopefully ill find a company with a rider policy and we will get to tour a little bit and see where we want to live.
Your experience cannot really be recognised, as they wouldn’t know too much about things over there, but your attitude can be recognised, starting at the bottom second time around is not as difficult as it was the first time, especially with all the newness of it all, the first few weeks over here will turn you into a big kid again, all those big trucks, big roads, big truckstops, it’s like trucking heaven
It takes a few months before reality hits you with a bump and everything becomes normal again, you settle in to just doing your job instead of being on holiday, a hard day’s work over here is still a hard day’s work, personally I prefer our hard day’s to the one’s I had in the UK, but then in my current job I’ve found exactly what I was looking for, I like the blinged up classic trucks, I like the big mile runs and the money they earn me, but others have different ideals, there’s a job out here to suit everyone, it may take a while for you to work out what you want, then it’ll take longer still to find the job that gives it to you, but it can be done