Some of you will know that I’m no longer at BFS, to save repeating myself in numerous PMs, this is why,
In the meeting I had in South Mimms with Big Freight I was told that I would be going all over Canada & the USA & that they had so much work I would be begging to get some time off.
The reality was somewhat different, I went to the USA 6 times in 5 months & 2 of those occasions were after I kicked off & refused other loads, everytime I got a run that ended near the yard I would spend at least 2 days waiting for my next job, most of the time I would then end up with a load to Saskatchewan or Alberta, which are supposedly short haul runs. As you will see from my ‘A few days work in Canada’ post I did get a few good trips, what I didn’t say in that was that the run to Northern Manitoba was only given to me after I threatened to run home empty from Thunder Bay ON before they had me change trailers with another driver who was stupid enough to sit there for the weekend waiting for a load or that the run to BC from Brandon only happened because I refused a 500 mile 4 drop run & somebody else refused the run to BC!
I had a lot of breakdowns with the Kenworth I had & a lot of this was down to the incompetence of the workshop, if the job was done right in the first place it wouldn’t have kept breaking down, I then got a new Volvo after refusing to drive the heap of junk KW again, this then had an injector problem while in for a service on a Friday night, i came in on Monday to go out on a run & was told to take it to Volvo in Winnipeg, which they should’ve done over the weekend! Anyway, Volvo needed it for a few days so I phoned in & was told to book into a hotel, I told them bollox as I live near the yard & they could come & get me, they said they had nobody to come & get me so I ended up getting a friend to do it, a total ■■■■ take if you ask me!
So to cut a long story short, it was the same thing week in, week out, being offered crap work & refusing it so that i could make my miles, I had numerous other issues but my main one was the lack of miles so I’ll concentrate on that, in the end I had enough of it so I handed in my notice, I had a sit down with Jeff McMaster & the President of the company, Earl Coleman, they asked me to reconsider & to give them their due, they didn’t come up with a load of ■■■■■■■■ excuses, but listened to my reasons. Hopefully they’ll make the changes that the place badly needs.
I must stress that this is MY story, there are people that are happy there, In my new job I’m in the States all the time & I see BFS trucks about so they do have the good runs, I think I was a victim of my own success, I still managed to make at least 10000 miles per month doing the short haul runs but it involved a lot of very long days & very late nights, I won’t say that I had to fiddle my logs to do it because that is illegal & I could be prosecuted for that , but just because I’m not saying it…
After all that, I’m still glad I came to Canada though, I now have a really good job, better money, better motor, better work & a much nicer friendlier atmosphere & I’m writing this with a belly full of steak & chips in a truckstop in Dallas, Texas, it’s 18deg & the sun’s been shining all day 
