Hi everyone. There often seems to be an unfair proportion of negative stories about emigration to Canada on the internet as far as trucking goes when in fact there is hundreds of untold success stories.
I emigrated to Manitoba along with my wife and kids in 2007 and we are very happy and settled now.
My wife & 3 children enjoy their new lives and my kids are doing very well at school here. We were granted permanent residency status nearly a year ago and i changed employers soon after. It is often the case that the companies that recruit from Europe are not the most competitive to work for. I supose that statement speaks for it’s self, however i left my original employer with no bad feeling towards them and would still recomend them to anyone who was considering leaving the UK.
I work for a small company now on long haul reefer work and mostly run to the southern US. We carry chilled and frozen meat products down to the Mexico border and reload fruit and other produce mostly out of California, Arizona & Texas.
This is a diary of a recent trip and is fairly typical of my job.
Day 1.
My truck and trailer is stored inside a barn as the outside temperature is very cold today (-37 degc). Despite that it is sunny with very still air so being outside is not that unpleasant. I pull my truck outside into the light and have a quick walk around to check everything is ok and let the engine idle warm while i start my logbook. (glad to say theres no tachos here!) I start my reefer motor going to warm up the trailer and its off to a local farm to load seed potatoes.
2 miles out of home and the first problem arises. After i dab the brakes at the end of our road i see that one of the trailer wheels has locked up and is dragging along without turning. D’oh! So now its under the trailer on my hands and knees with a hammer to knock it off again. That is when the extreme temperature is more of an issue. At this point i also pour some alcohol down the airlines as well allthough that wouldn’t of freed an already frozen drum.
I get to the farm and load the potatoes. They are loaded in bulk off a conveyor belt onto the floor with a layer of sawdust spread first to stop them freezing. The reefer is set at plus 10 degc and at this point is protecting the spuds from the cold by warming them up. I will leave it on the same setting and as we travel south and the climate warms up it will stop heating at all. By the time we get to Florida it will have to work hard again to keep them chilled!
After loading and checking axle weights for strict US limits its time to sort out paperwork and customs procedures. Then its time to head down to the border and into North Dakota. Fuel, shower and evening meal at the big Flying J at Fargo, ND then start heading SE through Minnesota. Park for a quiet night at a rest area east of St Cloud. Only 825 kms today but got loaded etc so not so bad really. The temperature here is a much more pleasant -5.
Day 2…
Start at 6.30am and run through Minneapolis and across state line into Wisconsin. Across Wisconsin into Illinois and stop for fuel, shower meal, ect at a truckstop at La salle Il. The major roads in the eastern side of the US are much busier than the west (although not compared to Europe) but despite this i make it to the huge TA truckstop at Mount Vernon in southern Illinois to park. 1,038 kms travelled today. Outside temp above freezing now!
Day 3…
Run over state line into Tennessee and stop at a truckstop at Nashville. US truckstops are fantastic by any European standard and provide all kinds of services as well as the usual things. This one even has a chapel run by a group who provide church services to truckstops throughout the US.
While i was in the truckstop this car transporter pulled in which i thought was quite cool if a bit of a handfull to manouver in a tight space!
Then head south to Chattanooga, cross into Georgia and keep going south with the weather getting warmer and warmer until after 1,130kms park at another Flying J truckstop. No chapel at this one but it is built on land reclaimed from the swamp and is surrounded with lakes inhabited by wild alligators. A guy who works there tells told how a 13 foot long example had to be removed from the weighbridge one morning.
Day 4…
Head down into Florida and run south down I 95 along the atlantic coast towards the farm to unload the potatoes. Next find the farm and back onto a ramp to be unloaded by a bobcat skidsteer. In not much time the trailer is empty and the notes are signed.
Now its just a matter of waiting to find a reload to go back to Canada. Sometimes this can take a day or more but i don’t usually mind as i am ready for a rest after a few hard days graft and anyway it is a good oportunity to reset the logbook and start with a clean sheet again. This time i am informed that the reload will be from Pompano beach near Fort Lauderdale which is on the coast just north of Miami.
As the reload is not ready yet i can park and reset anywhere in between so i decide to run into Orlando and see if i can find Mickey Mouse.
Its just such a shame that i am on my own and not with my family who are bravely enduring the cold at home. Here it is now in the mid 20’s compared to the minus 30’s that i left behind 3,400 kms ago.
If anyone is interested i will post a diary of the trip back north.
Yeah, Please continue.
can you post some pics of the inside so we can see the amount of space you have to work in or is that too sad? 
And I am 27 this year so would be looking around age 28-0 for when I actually had a go so by then there may be no jobs over there hence no visa’s 
