How hard/easy is it to get a job driving in Canada or USA?
What conditions do you have to meet immigration wise?
Could i take the wife and kids out with me?
DonutUK:
How hard/easy is it to get a job driving in Canada or USA?What conditions do you have to meet immigration wise?
Could i take the wife and kids out with me?
I have been in Canada a little over 3 months now, I started work a week ago last thursday, driving 7.5 tonners, and quit this morning for various reasons. Basically running overweight, little or no maintenance (Brake Failure on Highway 16). Im still looking for that elusive Class 1 Job. It has been a struggle to get work to begin with, but I have seen signs things are picking up again. (I have 3 jobs lined up lol.)
Immigration wise, im not too sure about, as i can come and go freely between England and Canada whenever i please. The joy of being a dual citizen 
(I dont need a TWP / LMO etc)
As for bringing your family over, yes this is possible, as many other drivers have come over with their families…
Ill leave now and await our resident expert Bobthedog fill in the rest 
DonutUK:
How hard/easy is it to get a job driving in Canada or USA?What conditions do you have to meet immigration wise?
Could i take the wife and kids out with me?
What experience do you have of driving here in the UK? And how much of it do you have?
I have held my LGV for 10 yrs although haven’t had much recent driving work.
Have been working for the railway for the last 5 yrs, but doing some casual work on weekends or the odd week here or there to keep my hand in. But haven’t much in the last 6-12 months for various reasons.
Have experience with fridges, curtains, doing mostly RDC, store deliveries but have done some skip work and have experience at Recovery work.
DonutUK:
How hard/easy is it to get a job driving in Canada or USA?What conditions do you have to meet immigration wise?
Could i take the wife and kids out with me?
No chance in the USA, unless you marry and American or have loadsamoney
DAFMAD:
DonutUK:
How hard/easy is it to get a job driving in Canada or USA?What conditions do you have to meet immigration wise?
Could i take the wife and kids out with me?
No chance in the USA, unless you marry and American or have loadsamoney
Not necessarily! It depends what you class as “loadsamoney” Look at the E2 visa option, I have been working and living in the USA for over 2 years and I know people here from the UK who are on E2 status having invested anywhere from $50,000 (USD) to $150,000 and more. E2 requires investment but sometimes not as much as you think! If you are on the britishtruckersabroad forum you can read recent posts there about the USA E2 option and trucking. I was over 20 years in trucking in the UK, have been trucking in the USA for over 2 years and my only regret is that I didn’t move to the USA sooner, still hard work but the outcome is much better not just financially but quality of life also - everybody is different so it may not suit some but its worked for me and my family.
Truck driving here is damm hard work and very poor conditions. Most companies expect you to sit around waiting for loads for hours or even days without pay, they only pay by the mile and not the hour, you have to work a whole year to get just one week off, no sick pay or anything simlar and you could be away from home for a month or more then they expect you to have just 34 hours at home.
They will promise you the earth to get you hooked then drop you in the poop 
I am married to a US citizen with US children who does not want to live in the UK (cant blame her) and I have a lifestyle here better than back there, but if we had never left the UK in the first place I would have been better off and happier, there is far more secrurity in the UK, if you get in any financial trouble here you will find no sympathy anywhere, miss 2 morgage payments and loose your home for instance, get hurt at work, loose your job, loose your income, loose everything. Health insurance is a joke 
If you get sick and cant pay the premiums its cancelled 
half the medicines you may need are not covered by them and they can refuse treatments for anything they want. No worker has any rights.
Stay where you are mate, you are safer and better off.
Pat and I obviously have two different view points on life in the USA! I have my own trucking company and work under my own authority so I obviously haven’t experienced the bad working conditions that Pat talks about. When I came here at first I did work for a USA trucking company as a lease operator but did not experience the bad conditions, I must have hit it lucky but I did only work there for 8 months before starting my own company.
I do agree with Pat about the health insurance - the only good side is that we pay less every month on our health insurance policy than we did in National Insurance contributions in the UK but regardless of whether you go to the doctor or the hospital or whatever here your hand will be in your pocket paying out as the insurance companies never cover the full costs until you have reached your deductible limit. Health insurance regulation and major reform in the USA is long overdue in my book.
There are down and up sides to anywhere in the world you want to live but going on my experience so far I couldn’t advise anyone not to try the USA if that’s what they want to do and have the means to do so, it has been very good for us.
Maybe Mr Obama will change that.
In Canada it is all free at source. You pay for the scripts but my insurance gives 80% at source so it isn’t so bad. Not sure that I can see Canada as Pat or Peter see the US. See, I came here with hopes, not expectations, and I did not have the advantage Pat had of a lovely wife who knew her way around, or the years of visits to help me decide. Neither did I have any real money to invest.
In truth, Canada offers a double bite of the cherry. You get to go south and buy things with greenbacks, then you can come back north and see the Queen on your money. Canada has a better health system, a simpler tax system, no toll roads, less crime, fewer rednecks, fewer lot lizards…
Where Pat is is nice. Green and appealing. But you can keep the south, thanks. While it is sort of nice to see the spring already springing (at home everything is still dead and brown at the moment and we still dip well below freezing at night) it is still a pain in the backside with the traffic and some of the attitudes.
Peter, I am not sure how many people have that sort of money they can invest in emigration. I suspect it is very few. And the operating authority is a pain for anyone on my side of the border to get for running south. Also, if you haven’t hit on tighter times then you are very fortunate. Many have not been. Your situation was obviously very different from Pat, me, Mark et al. I hope things continue working that way for you. But I suspect you are making some people view a move as simple.
There’s nothing much in life simple and I don’t think I was portraying living and working in the USA as simple. However, in my experience it was a lot less complicated coming here than I had been lead to believe, if and I know its a big if for some people, you have funds available for investment eg to buy your own truck etc and if you use professionals to assist you. Getting my motor carrier operating authority for the USA was one of the most simple things that I have done - pay OOIDA $300 or thereabouts and they sort it all out for you. The stumbling block was getting insurance as the insurance companies wanted to see USA experience but I gave them copies of my operating authority from the UK, criminal history check from the UK and that worked and I got the insurance.
The world’s an interesting place because we are all different - I’ll stick with the South! but good to read others views.
It is getting the authority for interstate transportation that is a pain up here.
As things stand, it is more than if you have the funds… Sadly, the way things are, people are lucky to keep what they have. Now while it takes longer, the way I immigrated was cheaper and I am now in a position to do much as I choose. I suppose I could apply for the authority but the downside of it is that you have all the headaches that were in the UK and I don’t ever want to be as angry with people as I was over there. Horses for courses. I think I would stop driving altogether if I could find something else that pays, but that is unlikely so I will stay as I am for now.
I,am From the UK and moved to the U.S with my parents when I was 16 in 1981, I hold a class A CDL and have almost 20yrs of experience driving in the U.S. The one thing I have learned, if you are lucky enough to obtain a visa to live here, is stay away from large corparate carriers, unless you are single and do not mind living in your truck weeks at a time. I have always drove for small family companies, with these the equipment can be older and the pay a little less, but its worth it for the time off, I,am married to an American with 2 kids. I currently work for a small company, driving a tri axle dump truck and one of our tractors pulling either a flatbed or tanker, home every night. I would advise going to Canada to drive as their system is a better as far as rules and regulations and pay. The Commercial vehicle enforcement in the U.S is crazy, they target truckers for revenue. I will say I have a better life here in the U.S, but I do miss the old country, the wife just will not consider moving to the U.K.
My company needs loads of drivers based in Yonkers, our volume has quadrupled at least in the past couple of months.