Do H&R et all have any interest in the training companies/immigration specialists etc?
newmercman:
Do H&R et all have any interest in the training companies/immigration specialists etc?
I don’t think they do. They work with gateway in lethbridge for training but so do other companies and although the rumor goes that h&r and vrv global are connected i don’t think so as vrv does the paperwork for lots of other companies as well
I agree with crunchygear, the training company has changed hands since I did it & like he says VRV recruit for a lot of companies and different jobs, not only drivers.
The thing with H&R specifically is their business model is 100% customer service focused, it makes sense for them to have trucks in the starting blocks near their customers, as soon as they get a call they dispatch a truck. Maybe the unpaid waiting causes drivers to leave, but LMO allows them to get new drivers, they know a batch will quit, so they get a new batch in. It’s not hurting their profits, Gateway and The Sandman have an earner, the city of Lethbridge gets more people paying taxes and spending money and UK drivers get over to Canada…
Can’t see the problem myself!!
HaHa, one way of looking at it.
Got to be the only way to look at it, H&R are getting bigger, so they must be doing something right!
newmercman:
Got to be the only way to look at it, H&R are getting bigger, so they must be doing something right!
Thats just it, they’re experts (along with many other companies) at playing the system for all its worth. From an employee’s perspective, especially an employee from Europe who’s used to not being shafted financially by his employer in quite this manner, the system is a very broken one but while that system allows the driver to be the sole area of flexibility, the guy who takes the hit when it comes to waiting and then runs like mad to make up for it, things couldn’t be better, or easier for the companies. They don’t need to plan things better, they don’t need to make 2+2=4, it doesn’t matter, because the driver isn’t costing them anything while he sits around twiddling his thumbs, he’s a massive big sponge that ■■■■■ up all of their many incompetences in transport planning and leaves them looking look a big successful and professional company when time and time again he puts up with it, shuts up and gets there load there when the scrap of work has being thrown his way. North American trucking, in my opinion is one big circus, run in a very yeehaw unprofessional, couldn’t care less attitude and sometimes I do feel like I’m the only clown in the whole affair who’s trying to keep a straight face.
Thank fuark I know work for a small company run by a Christian group who consider such ways immoral and put in so much effort at running the job right, keeping drivers moving, paying for waiting time and getting me home just about every weekend, it actually almost feels like I’m working for a British company, driving an American truck and that is a long way from the experience of most companies here, especially my first company which were every bit as bad as H&R, just on a much smaller scale.
So how do you know it is incompetence that’s the reason for layovers 
In the reefer game especially that is not always the case, the customer requests trucks because they have a load of cows being murdered or fruit coming from the fields, something goes wrong and all of a sudden there are no loads ready, so the truck sits 
In other cases a customer will request a delivery to a city, yet there are no reloads available, they cannot magic a load out of thin air, so they have to wait until something comes up, they cannot just take any load as they must come back to Canada, so the truck sits
Q…Who is at fault for the driver sitting without pay
A…The person that accepted that as part of their T’s&C’s 
I know its incompetence because I’m doing exactly the same loads for my current employer now for the same shippers and receivers and rather than the usual 1 day wait for a reload that my first company would have, I get loaded the same day, within hours and never sit around. Said first company wouldn’t even book a reload until you’d sent in your empty message, which always meant a massive delay between being empty and being able to reload. Another favourite of theirs was to sell work on to a third company and keep us waiting, or pass up on one load for another two days later that paid more.
I loaded in Houston, TX this week and when I backed on to a dock there was a truck from another Woodstock, NB company there who’d been at the warehouse for 3 bloody days trying to get loaded. I know for a fact that my company would pull me out within 12 hours of any of that crap or pay me to wait, yet there was the jolly old Canadian redneck chundering about it, but putting up with it. When the shipping staff tried to mess me around I gave them an ultimatum of load me now or I’m going, I called my office and told them, they backed me up on that choice, especially upon hearing about Mr 3 day wait and told me to hang in for a few hours to see, and if not they’ll send me to the Mexican border for something else as they already had 3 other job offers for my truck outside of the one they accepted in Houston and this is the norm.
Theres plenty of work out there, the vast majority of our trucks have reloads booked before we even leave Canada and they’re properly planned so theres no down time in between and 95% of the time, that’s exactly what happens. It can be done if the companies want to, most just can’t be bothered because they’ve never had to be bothered.