Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).
robinhood_1984:
Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).
Would that be because pay and conditions are so bad 
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).Would that be because pay and conditions are so bad
Compared to what?
I work for REM Transport, out of St Stephen, NB. Our guy is still looking for European guys, preferable ones that can speak English. But we stopped trying to get them for a while because of a couple of bad experiences with guys coming over and have no idea about what they were getting into.
You and I both know you aren’t going to earn a fortune over here and you aren’t going to get a 10hrs a day job lol
I earned more and was home everynight back in the UK but I came over for a change of scenery and less traffic, which is what I got and I’ve loved every minute of it, I should’ve done it years ago 
Stu Leicester:
I work for REM Transport, out of St Stephen, NB. Our guy is still looking for European guys, preferable ones that can speak English. But we stopped trying to get them for a while because of a couple of bad experiences with guys coming over and have no idea about what they were getting into.
You and I both know you aren’t going to earn a fortune over here and you aren’t going to get a 10hrs a day job lol
I earned more and was home everynight back in the UK but I came over for a change of scenery and less traffic, which is what I got and I’ve loved every minute of it, I should’ve done it years ago
Spot on mate. I always say you drive for a living in Canada and worry for a living in the UK. Give me 13hrs of driving a day on a log book over worrying about digi-tachos, speed cameras, wearing a poxy vis-vest etc etc etc any day.
robinhood_1984:
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).Would that be because pay and conditions are so bad
Compared to what?
Compared to a decent long haul job with a reputable company.
According to your own stated figures/miles it puts you around $1000 per month down on what is earned as an average at companies around here, and please don’t come back with the cost of living being less because that will never account for $1000 per month.
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).Would that be because pay and conditions are so bad
Compared to what?
Compared to a decent long haul job with a reputable company.
According to your own stated figures/miles it puts you around $1000 per month down on what is earned as an average at companies around here, and please don’t come back with the cost of living being less because that will never account for $1000 per month.
Sorry but I dont recall talking facts or figures with you, you’ll have to jog my memory on that one? I dont even know where you live so what are we even comparing here?
robinhood_1984:
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
On the road again:
robinhood_1984:
Who do you work for mate? I’ve recently started with Armour doing Maritimes work after two years at Donnelly Farms and a short spell at Sunbury. There seems to be a complete absense of British drivers coming over here now. When I arrived in May 2008 there were loads coming over but now they seem to be bringing over Russians (Donnelly’s) and Latvians (Sunbury).Would that be because pay and conditions are so bad
Compared to what?
Compared to a decent long haul job with a reputable company.
According to your own stated figures/miles it puts you around $1000 per month down on what is earned as an average at companies around here, and please don’t come back with the cost of living being less because that will never account for $1000 per month.Sorry but I dont recall talking facts or figures with you, you’ll have to jog my memory on that one? I dont even know where you live so what are we even comparing here?
My mistake, it was stu who disclosed his pocket money 
No problem. Its no secret that the wages are lower in the maritime provinces, although at the moment they do seem to have risen and be on par with many companies in Manitoba. The difference being that in Manitoba you’ll generally get more miles and longer trips as most maritime companies do triangle work, and each leg is only a day or less with waiting times at each stage. I think the driving is definetely better and more enjoyable out west but on my many visits there nothing would inspire me to want to live there. I really like living in New Brunswick, but I hate triangle work so it is a bit of a catch 22 situation, for me at least. All depends on what you want though.
So are the wages much lower in the Maritimes?
I know driving a truck will never make you rich, but surely you have a better standard of living than you did in the UK?
newmercman:
So are the wages much lower in the Maritimes?I know driving a truck will never make you rich, but surely you have a better standard of living than you did in the UK?
Depends how you look at it mate. I’m a single guy and came to Canada by myself and for the almost two years I spent at Donnelly Farms I lived in my truck, used the company for my address and just carried on like that. I earnt pretty good money most weeks but I wont lie, due to the nature of reefer work on the east coast, to make that money meant running bent almost all the time to some degree or another. Basically as you know, you get paid by the mile, so when you arrive somewhere and wait 7 hours on a door getting loaded, you can not justify logging it as such, so you re-write and then drive the equivillent of what you’d have done had it only taken one hour to load. So, you’re still only earning a days wage, but instead of doing a 14hr spread over (which is what you’re logging) you end up doing 19 or 20 hours. It didnt take me long to get fed up of living and working like that, theres nothing worse than putting in a good two days drive to get somewhere then sit there for a day and a half because they cant organise a re-load, or more to the point they’re getting a better paying load tomorrow than they can get today and as they dont pay you to wait, they keep you waiting for free.
I stuck it out there until I got my permanent residence, at which point I returned home to England for a visit over Christmas and when I came back I started for Sunbury which was a world of difference. 95% of the time I’d only work Monday morning to Friday afternoon, there was almost no waiting, lots of it was trailer swaps and I’d be earning more on average than at Donnellys, and it was all 100% legal running…well 95% lets say. The problems only started there when things went wrong on the truck and they had to go to Ryder in Moncton to be fixed and my truck was off the road for two whole weeks for a standard service and a new steering rack. Then my dispatcher was off work the next week and the guy who looked after the other half of the fleet had his trucks to deal with too, so instead of getting my usual 4000-4500km for five days, I got 1750km in five days and the following week they were intending to short pay me by over 100km for a trip, which started an argument, they refused to pay so I refused to load it and the rest is history really. I was told if I dont like it, I’d have to empty my truck in Montreal and make my own way home…needless to say that wasn’t going to happen so I drove over night back to NB and emptied out the truck at home and returned it to the yard. I didnt quit, I just refused to work for free and asked for a job where I’d be getting paid for the miles I was actually driving and when they threatned to maroon me 800km from home in French speaking Montreal I felt I had no choice but to look after number one and get myself back before they did something like call the police and have the truck impounded and me standing on the side of the road with all my gear. On hindsight I wished the whole episode had never happened but there you go, when you only get paid when the truck is moving you tend to take things like that a bit more seriously than back in the UK where its hourly pay or day rate.
Do we have a better standard of life in Canada? Its hard to say, its just so different. If you want to be a cab rat like I was and have an adventure and see things then yeah, its definetely a good experience but if you have a wife and kids and want to see them more than once every 10 days for more than 36 hours then thats another thing. To earn the big money here you’ve got to be always on the road and be prepared to run bent to varying degrees depending on what type of work your company is engaged in. In that respect your better off out west because, for example, on a three day drive from Winnipeg to Laredo theres no where to hide anything on a log, its 11hrs drive and 10hrs off every day, full days driving, full night sleep, you just end up doing 12 on 12 off. With east coast work its only a day down to NY, then you mess around waiting, then its less than a day to Toronto where it takes most of the day to tip and load, so theres two occasions where you’ll be re-writing and losing wasted time and then its a 13hr drive back to NB, usually over night and on in to the next day after having had no sleep because the day before you’ve been tipping and loaded, regardless of what your re-wrote log book says.
If you come to New Brunswick and want a better standard of life I’d advise steering clear of fridge work and trying to get on dry vans as theres generally a lot less messing about which means less running bent, which they are cracking down hard on now in the states so its not worth it anyway.
I think the work would be better somewhere like Manitoba but you’d probably be away for 10-14 days. In New Brunswick, on the triangle work at least, you can be home pretty much every weekend to a degree, but you mess around so much in the week that come the weekend all you do is sleep so its catch 22.
From what I’ve experienced myself and the familes I’ve seen come across I think that on the whole its not a better standard of life here, especially for you as the driver and your partner, it may be better for the kids, but I cant be sure. Personally speaking if I’d have had a wife and kids, I’d never have done this but thats just my opinion from the experiences I’ve had and the company I came to work for.
None of this is to say that you or any one else couldn’t come here and make a real success of it and be completely happy. All I’m trying to do is be honest and paint my own experiences, both good and bad in a true light.
You have got to remember there is more than OTR driving in Manitoba&.canada.after you get PR.
some of us drive ,redimix/ tippers,(me)//…some on day work,some on fuel.
speaking for myself i am earning more now than when on the road and home 95% at night and run legal (weightwise) as much as i can.
and dont forget the oil patch is now moving into west M<anitoba.
jimmy
I couldn’t have put that any better myself, I pretty sure I could earn more money working for a company “out west” but I’ve ended up with a company that has given me exactly what I wanted and I’ve enjoyed every minute. As it happens I’m hopefully going to try and come off long haul stuff soon, because I have and girlfriend and a young child but I certainly regret moving over here in the first place and would do it all again in a heartbeat
robinhood_1984:
newmercman:
So are the wages much lower in the Maritimes?I know driving a truck will never make you rich, but surely you have a better standard of living than you did in the UK?
Depends how you look at it mate. I’m a single guy and came to Canada by myself and for the almost two years I spent at Donnelly Farms I lived in my truck, used the company for my address and just carried on like that. I earnt pretty good money most weeks but I wont lie, due to the nature of reefer work on the east coast, to make that money meant running bent almost all the time to some degree or another. Basically as you know, you get paid by the mile, so when you arrive somewhere and wait 7 hours on a door getting loaded, you can not justify logging it as such, so you re-write and then drive the equivillent of what you’d have done had it only taken one hour to load. So, you’re still only earning a days wage, but instead of doing a 14hr spread over (which is what you’re logging) you end up doing 19 or 20 hours. It didnt take me long to get fed up of living and working like that, theres nothing worse than putting in a good two days drive to get somewhere then sit there for a day and a half because they cant organise a re-load, or more to the point they’re getting a better paying load tomorrow than they can get today and as they dont pay you to wait, they keep you waiting for free.
I stuck it out there until I got my permanent residence, at which point I returned home to England for a visit over Christmas and when I came back I started for Sunbury which was a world of difference. 95% of the time I’d only work Monday morning to Friday afternoon, there was almost no waiting, lots of it was trailer swaps and I’d be earning more on average than at Donnellys, and it was all 100% legal running…well 95% lets say. The problems only started there when things went wrong on the truck and they had to go to Ryder in Moncton to be fixed and my truck was off the road for two whole weeks for a standard service and a new steering rack. Then my dispatcher was off work the next week and the guy who looked after the other half of the fleet had his trucks to deal with too, so instead of getting my usual 4000-4500km for five days, I got 1750km in five days and the following week they were intending to short pay me by over 100km for a trip, which started an argument, they refused to pay so I refused to load it and the rest is history really. I was told if I dont like it, I’d have to empty my truck in Montreal and make my own way home…needless to say that wasn’t going to happen so I drove over night back to NB and emptied out the truck at home and returned it to the yard. I didnt quit, I just refused to work for free and asked for a job where I’d be getting paid for the miles I was actually driving and when they threatned to maroon me 800km from home in French speaking Montreal I felt I had no choice but to look after number one and get myself back before they did something like call the police and have the truck impounded and me standing on the side of the road with all my gear. On hindsight I wished the whole episode had never happened but there you go, when you only get paid when the truck is moving you tend to take things like that a bit more seriously than back in the UK where its hourly pay or day rate.Do we have a better standard of life in Canada? Its hard to say, its just so different. If you want to be a cab rat like I was and have an adventure and see things then yeah, its definetely a good experience but if you have a wife and kids and want to see them more than once every 10 days for more than 36 hours then thats another thing. To earn the big money here you’ve got to be always on the road and be prepared to run bent to varying degrees depending on what type of work your company is engaged in. In that respect your better off out west because, for example, on a three day drive from Winnipeg to Laredo theres no where to hide anything on a log, its 11hrs drive and 10hrs off every day, full days driving, full night sleep, you just end up doing 12 on 12 off. With east coast work its only a day down to NY, then you mess around waiting, then its less than a day to Toronto where it takes most of the day to tip and load, so theres two occasions where you’ll be re-writing and losing wasted time and then its a 13hr drive back to NB, usually over night and on in to the next day after having had no sleep because the day before you’ve been tipping and loaded, regardless of what your re-wrote log book says.
If you come to New Brunswick and want a better standard of life I’d advise steering clear of fridge work and trying to get on dry vans as theres generally a lot less messing about which means less running bent, which they are cracking down hard on now in the states so its not worth it anyway.
I think the work would be better somewhere like Manitoba but you’d probably be away for 10-14 days. In New Brunswick, on the triangle work at least, you can be home pretty much every weekend to a degree, but you mess around so much in the week that come the weekend all you do is sleep so its catch 22.
From what I’ve experienced myself and the familes I’ve seen come across I think that on the whole its not a better standard of life here, especially for you as the driver and your partner, it may be better for the kids, but I cant be sure. Personally speaking if I’d have had a wife and kids, I’d never have done this but thats just my opinion from the experiences I’ve had and the company I came to work for.None of this is to say that you or any one else couldn’t come here and make a real success of it and be completely happy. All I’m trying to do is be honest and paint my own experiences, both good and bad in a true light.
JIMBO47:
You have got to remember there is more than OTR driving in Manitoba&.canada.after you get PR.
some of us drive ,redimix/ tippers,(me)//…some on day work,some on fuel.
speaking for myself i am earning more now than when on the road and home 95% at night and run legal (weightwise) as much as i can.
and dont forget the oil patch is now moving into west M<anitoba.
jimmy
Thats what I’m doing now. Started for Armour about two months ago here in NB on what was supposed to be a 4 on 4 off rota but until now I’ve just been doing Sunday to Thursday night in day cabs and home every day, and I’ve actually been earning the same money as I did on long haul. This coming week I’m finally starting the 4 on 4 off thing so I’ll see how that goes, I’ve spoken to loads of drivers who do it and it seems good money, not much different to now because instead of doing set runs five days a week to get back to the yard, you obviously run your time out to the max and stay in the truck. Basically a long haul type job but only within the maritime provinces.
I do still have the urge to travel more out west though. My ambition has always been to get all lower 48 states and all the Canadian provinces and so far I have 39 states and all of Canada except BC.
robinhood_1984:
newmercman:
So are the wages much lower in the Maritimes?I know driving a truck will never make you rich, but surely you have a better standard of living than you did in the UK?
None of this is to say that you or any one else couldn’t come here and make a real success of it and be completely happy. All I’m trying to do is be honest and paint my own experiences, both good and bad in a true light.
I have come here and made a success of it, I’m knocking on the door of half a million miles at my current job
I can tell a different story though and it echoes the sentiments of On the road again
I’ve managed to do my half million in 3yrs, by being planned properly and not spending days hanging around waiting to load/unload, I usually go to the coasts, East, West or Gulf and I can do a round trip in my 70 so don’t have to reset on the road. Sometimes I go to the Mid West, then I may do three in a fortnight and be OTR for a couple of weeks, but then I’ll try and work it so that I get a long weekend at least before I go back to work. This month has been a bit of a nightmare, I went out and did a couple of trips and had 7000miles covered in the first two weeks, then I had a head gasket go, I got it home, but as my truck has done a million miles they decided to do an inframe, a very in depth one too, so I lost a week there, I then took a spare truck out and went out to Eastern Ohio, loaded Michigan and ran it to Lethbridge, reloaded Calgary and back to Winnipeg, then went and did a Lethbridge round trip, this got me another 6000miles in 10 days, so I hit 13000miles for the month and did it in three weeks and my log book would stand an audit by the most pedantic DOT man in the world.
Obviously I don’t mess around, but I’m 99% legal, I also am rather well known for my late start to the day, I just keep it lit and get 700miles under the bumper each day when I do eventually drag my lazy arse out of my pit
It seems like it’s a very different job in the different provinces, from what I hear I’m glad I came to Manitoba
For anybody interested the company I work for has 2 open LMOs for New brunswick, just need names to put on the paperwork. For more info send me a private message.