Have any members here ever done a harvest run in the USA if so what is the age bracket ’ it could be a good way of gaining experience and getting a CDL liscence ’ I’m sure the money wouldn’t be great but what an experience of a lifetime .
I prefer to see it as a form of getting cheap labour, then dumping it back to Britain. I don’t see how you can get much real experience driving around farms in the remote areas of Montana or North Dakota ? They can’t get locals to do the work so they use the gullible to do it. It like schnieder using so called students for two years as a special training offer. It’s because US citizens who have any sense are not willing to work for them, they have no option but try and get people from outside the country, what those poor guys do not realise is thay they will just spend 2 years working like a dog, sharing a cab with some fat and smelly ■■■■■■, having no time off and after all the expenses and tax they will have to pay they will have probably the air fare home.
chef sauce:
Have any members here ever done a harvest run in the USA if so what is the age bracket ’ it could be a good way of gaining experience and getting a CDL liscence ’ I’m sure the money wouldn’t be great but what an experience of a lifetime .
I think you’d just be better off coming straight to Canada if you can. Employment conditions for Canadian drivers are far from ideal, but in my opinion they’re considerably better than what is the norm for the average American driver on general work.
Getting a CDL is far from hard, and most firms here are crying out for drivers so unless the US harvest thing is something you actually want to do for the sake of doing it, I’d just cut to the chase and come here, if coming to Canada is the end goal.
told as it is. 
Coming to Canada would be the end goal ’ it might look good on the golden cv a years experience the harvest run covers a bit more ground than North Dakota and Montana ’ goes as far south as Texas
give SATS 72 a shout .he did it and exchanged a USA licence for a Manitoba licence…
Hi chef sauce, as Jimmy said, I done the harvest run in 2011 to gain some experience. I couldn’t get a start in the UK (being a newbie) so via Big Truck from this forum, I got loads of great info and give it a go.
I’ve absolutely no regrets about it either. It got me a North Dakota CDL, 6 months of experience, 6 months tax free wages and most of all, a chance for a new life in Canada. I’ll not pretend it was all rosy (nothing ever is) but I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending to anyone wanting to gain some North American experience.
Good luck,
Mark.
Could you reccomend any decent company’s
I’ve done the harvest run, back in 2003 with a Kansas based Custom Harvester. They were a small outfit running three Gleaner combines at the time, with 30ft MacDon draper headers. Now they run two Case combines I believe. One of the two brothers sadly died last year, the other brother is carrying on, he is married to a Frederick (Frederick Harvesting). No, the money was not great but it never is in farming. The hours were plenty as they always are in farming but we had rain days and days where the crops ahead were not fit. Those were the days we got out sightseeing and so on and then at the end of it all we spent 6wks on the road sightseeing all over the States. I made friends for life there, spending a few weeks with the Danes I met, working on their family farm too. I was 23 when I did it and only wish I’d gone sooner and then done similar in more countries like Canada or somewhere in South America.
Go for it. Do something which will give you a story to tell others, it’s 9 months so if you don’t get rich in monetary terms it matters not. You’ll be rich in experience.
Try the combine forum, I’m not sure if you’ll get a decent company, but you’ll get some experience.
A friend of mine did it 10 yrs ago,wished he had done it years ago.This guy is a seasoned uk driver and wanted some fun,ive seen the photos. He worked hard!! but had a good time.
Gallagher’s Custom Harvesting & Trucking from Vermillion, Alberta might be worth a try.
The boss is Shawn Gallagher… Very interesting if you like machinery etc. but the problem can be living and working with the same people day in and day out as you don’t really get that much privacy. Everybody seems to know everyone else’s business.